From the lived suffering of the body to the emergence of a moral subject: A Levinasian reading of the film

Rouhani, Seyyed Ali; Shakeri Asadi, Mahsa

doi:10.22059/jfadram.2026.405340.616164

From the lived suffering of the body to the emergence of a moral subject: A Levinasian reading of the film "Two Days, One Night" by the Dardenne Brothers

Articles in Press

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

seyyed ali rouhani ¹

mahsa shakeri asadi ²

¹ professor assistant, university of art.

² ma in cinema, faculty of art, university of soore, tehran, iran

10.22059/jfadram.2026.405340.616164

Abstract

In the cinema of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, the human body transcends its biological or instrumental function to become the locus of ethical encounter and lived experience. The Dardennes’ formal style consistently centers the body as the structural axis of narrative form. Their handheld camera moves with intimate proximity to faces and gestures, lingering within the fragile interplay of glances, movements, and the surrounding space. Through this visual strategy, suffering, vulnerability, and moral choice are made visible in their most immediate, material manifestations. The filmmakers transform minor gestures—such as walking, touching, or speaking—into sites of ethical resonance where the physical and the moral intersect. In their films, the ordinary world of labor and social struggle becomes a space of both solidarity and tension, in which ethical responsibility is enacted through corporeal presence rather than abstract reflection. This approach finds profound philosophical affinity with Emmanuel Levinas’s ethics, which reorients philosophy from the domain of ontology to that of responsibility. For Levinas, the body precedes conceptual thought and serves as the ground of sensibility, receptivity, and openness to the Other. The encounter with the Other’s face exposes a radical vulnerability that demands an ethical response and interrupts the self’s autonomy.

Keywords

Dardenne Brothers

Levinas’s Moral Philosophy

Embodiment

Face-to-Face Encounter

Two Days

One Night

Subjects