Documents

SYNOPSIS
In Hakone (Japan), a young French woman visits the open-air museum with two Japanese friends. She films with her digital video camera and stops by Rodin’s Monumental Balzac. Fascinated, she learns that Rodin never saw the bronze version of his statue. In fact after the huge scandal caused by his Balzac in 1898, he refused until his death to have the original plaster version cast into bronze.The young woman decides to find out more about the story, and to understand Rodin’s refusal. Her quest even starts in Paris at Balzac’s death, in 1850…
As if she was traveling back in time, she first visits Balzac’s house in Paris (today the Balzac Museum). She discovers a striking plaster statue of Balzac. Rodin made it, inspite the two artists never met.

A sculptor told her why the caster couldn’t take the imprint of Balzac’s mortuary mask, which could have been used to compose a monument to his glory.
That is when Balzac’s voice comes in and breaks the purely documentary aspect of that investigation. We hear him as he lays down a challenge to sculptors to come…

Nevertheless, the young woman pursues her investigation, which leads her to the Society of Writers (Société des Gens de Lettres – SGDL). She learns about what feels like a curse: the failure of the two first attempts to build a monument to Balzac. Alexandre Dumas, who wanted to honor the writer, met the opposition of his widow. And in 1888, the SGDL chose a sculptor who died prematurely.

Fourty years after Balzac’s death, in 1891, Emile Zola, president of the SGDL, orders from Rodin a monument to Balzac.

Rodin accepts. His voice comes from his studio in Meudon. Balzac replies to him. He announces that from then on, he will track him down like an “evil thought”, all along his creation work. An imaginary dialogue begins between the two men and will continue during all the narration
With passion, Rodin engages in a true “manhunt”, as he needs a living model, in flesh and blood. It is as if he was trying to resuscitate Balzac.

The young woman relives for us Rodin’s itinerary in Touraine (the region where Balzac was born). Just like Rodin, she discovers all the places where Balzac has lived, as well as documents of the novelist in the region. She reveals Rodin’s method. Her investigation is punctuated by the imaginary dialogue between Rodin and Balzac.
Just like the sculptor did, the young woman organizes a true “casting” to find a contemporary look-alike of Balzac, as Rodin’s model.

Then we learn about the numerous challenges Rodin had to face. His obsessive research tleads him to trespass the initial delay of the SGDL and his needs of money. Balzac is still sarcastic and ironic. For example, what about his passion for Camille Claudel, during this time in Touraine!.

Therefore, parallely to the young woman’s investigation, we enter the privacy of these two great artists. Balzac is on the one hand seduced by Rodin (a restless worker, a perfectionist, his patience) but he refuses to recognize himself in the model chosen by the sculptor: Estager, a simple coach driver, that Rodin gets to pose in the nude and who grows his hair to look more like the great novelist.
Three years after they placed their order, the committee of the SGDL refuses the sculptor’s studies including the nudes and ask him to give back the advance payment. That dark period also coincides with his break-up with Camille Claudel.
However, Rodin comes across two major pieces of evidence.

The young woman has a contemporary daguerreotypist develop the same portrait that Balzac had commissioned. This unique photograph will be a fundamental reference to Rodin. She also discovers a portrait for his muse that Balzac wanted to keep secret.

The SGDL and the press attack the sculptor (documents exhumed by the young woman). His enemies are plotting to have another sculptor. But Rodin is still accumulating study after study. Some of them are filmed with the Motion control system, which allows us to feel the vision Rodin could have had of his own sculptures…

Rodin remains silent in front of his detractors. Balzac is still haunting but he even gets angry at the writer. Rodin finally finds the head of his Balzac. And at last, seven years after the initial commission, he finishes his plaster statue. The SGDL accepts to present it in Paris, in the art fair of 1898..

But this statue is rejected and booed by the public and the press. Rodin is even inflicted a double refusal. The SGDL, that had commissioned the monument, won’t take it and the City of Paris refuses to find a space for this monstrosity, to quote the words of the City Council… At the time, this huge scandal meets another historical battle of ideas: the Dreyfus affair. The opponents to the Balzac statue are all anti-Dreyfus, whereas most of Rodin’s supporters are Dreyfusards.

Rodin explains to Balzac why he decided to take back his peace. He wishes the first bronze copy of his Balzac to be erected in Paris before anywhere else. That won’t happen until 1917, the date of Rodin’s death.

Rodin becomes mute but Balzac remains in the shadow of the young woman as she carries on with her investigation. She discovers the images of twelve bronze copies of the statue (Anvers, New York, two in Paris, Hakone, Caracas, Washington, Pasadena, Los Angeles, Melbourne, Eindhoven, Prague, and one unknown location). Why are there thirteen bronze although according to the law there should be only twelve.

She finds out about the strange agreement that was made for the first bronz in Anvers in 1931. The bronze number one will be attrubute to the second cast which will be erected in 1936 in Paris (at the Carrefour Vavin). The thirteenth bronze is in Prague where the young woman sees on its pedestal a mention of its exceptional status.

The story ends for the young woman near the Parisian Balzac, under the plane trees of Carrefour Vavin with a double dedication: “A BALZAC, A RODIN” (To Balzac, to Rodin). A double homage. Who’s paying homage to whom?

As the silence comes back in the Parisian night, Balzac’voice comes in for one last time. He quotes his preface to The Thirteen (Histoire des Treize): “…and there are thirteen of us; all blessed with a great energy, animated by the same feeling, and cast out from the same soul. »