Michel Hazanavicius, the Oscar-winning director of The Artist, has written an explicit open letter to Isis following the attacks in Paris last Friday.
Hazanavicius posted the 1,000 word note on his Facebook page, and addressed it to the “men and women of the Islamic State”.
“It’s official, you’re waging war on us,” he wrote. “What’s frustrating is that you have no uniforms, no distinctive marks. We don’t know how to recognize you, and thus we don’t have anyone to fight against – though I hope such frustration doesn’t lead us to finger the wrong man. Yet if each death is, without a doubt, a sign of victory for you, you must know that you’re not about to defeat us. It’s even impossible. Because whatever you do, you will not change us.”
Hazanavicius went on to revel in the kind of traditional Gallic behaviour to which some in Isis take exception.
“Here in France, what we love is life. And the pleasures that go with it,” he wrote. “For us, between being born and dying as late as possible, the main idea is to fuck, laugh, eat, play, fuck, drink, read, take a nap, fuck, talk, eat, argue, paint, fuck, take a walk, do some gardening, read, fuck, give, fuck, sleep, watch movies, scratch our balls, fart to make our friends laugh, but above all to fuck, and eventually get a nice little handjob.
“We are the nation of pleasure, more than one of morals. One day, we may even name a plaza after Monica Lewinsky, and that will make us laugh.”
Hazanavicius was born and raised in Paris where he still lives with his wife, Artist star Bérénice Bejo and their children. His Lithuanian Jewish grandparents settled in France in the 1920s.
At Cannes last year he debuted his first film since The Artist to a mixed response. The Search is a remake of Fred Zinnemann’s post-Holocaust drama, which relocates the narrative about a westerner caring for an orphaned child to the Chechen war in 2000. The film is being re-edited with a view to release.
Hazanavicius’s note concluded in saying that even in defeat, the French would retain their sense of identity:
“Of course, we will not win either. People will die for nothing. Others will decide to back Le Pen, Assad or Putin to get rid of you, and we may lose two times over because of that. But you will not win. And those who remain will continue to fuck, to drink, to have dinner together, to remember those who have died, and to fuck.”
