Due to “Star Wars Rebels,” we have recognized that the Ghorman Bloodbath was one thing that might be coming to a head sooner or later throughout this season of “Andor.” This third batch of episodes in season 2 has given us a have a look at precisely how the Imperial Safety Bureau baited the Ghormans into protest, how they formed the galactic sentiment in opposition to the Ghormans, and the way they crushed them with superior firepower. Now that we have seen the eighth episode of this second season and the bloodbath itself performed out, we’re in a position to perceive the utter depravity with which the Empire operated. It was so disgusting it was even revolting to Syril Karn (Kyle Soller), and that claims fairly a bit given he is been so devoted to the order led to by the Empire.
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The Ghorman protest and ensuing bloodbath is not with out echoes of movies from the previous, although, and there are two particularly that really feel poignant and add a lot to the tapestry of the episode.
Andor season 2 calls again to Casablanca and the French Resistance
There’s one thing poetic about how French-like the Ghorman language already sounds. It was constructed, phrase by phrase, based mostly on French phonetics. Seeing a individuals with that French feeling to their language and a deep resistance in opposition to occupiers which have lengthy been coded as militaristic Nazis has all the time been a robust picture in “Star Wars,” particularly since “Star Wars” has all the time had political symbolism at its forefront.
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It is no surprise the filmmakers would create a second that evokes the identical rousing emotional affect as a traditional movie that offers with the French resistance in opposition to the Nazis. In Michael Curtiz’s iconic 1942 movie “Casablanca,” the meeting of French individuals in Rick’s Cafe Americain drown out the hatred of the Nazis by singing a heartfelt rendition of their very own nationwide anthem, “Les Marseilles.” It is among the finest moments in a movie stuffed with nice moments, and each time I watch it, it manages to convey me to tears with out fail. It speaks to a individuals who haven’t misplaced hope of their nation within the face of such evil and tyranny, they usually’re keen to face up irrespective of the results. On Ghorman, they’ve this identical conviction as they sing their anthem within the faces of the Imperials who they sense are able to do them violence. It is an emotional second within the episode and delightful and keenly modulates this second from “Casablanca” into “Star Wars” in a contemporary and sudden manner.
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The Odessa Steps
In Sergei Eisenstein’s traditional 1925 silent epic “Battleship Potemkin,” there’s an notorious sequence referred to as “The Odessa Steps.” The movie tells the story of the Russian seamen aboard the Potemkin and their mutiny in the course of the Revolution of 1905. Within the closing act of the movie, there’s a group of civilians watching them and cheering them on, however a bunch of Cossacks arrive, hemming the civilians right into a sq. from the highest of a staircase and opening fireplace as they march upon them. This imagery has change into an iconic trope all through movie historical past. This was the origin of the child carriage rolling down the steps whereas individuals had been being killed, repeated most famously in “The Untouchables.” Relating to “Star Wars,” George Lucas discovered inspiration on this sequence for Anakin Skywalker’s march in opposition to the Jedi Temple up the steps alongside the 501st in “Revenge of the Sith.”
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However we get a model of it right here in “Andor,” because the jackbooted Stormtroopers of the Empire lure the civilian protestors of Ghorman into the sq. — a sq. already memorializing a earlier bloodbath on the positioning — as they shoot them down one after the other. It evokes the identical horrific emotions that Sergei Eisenstein offered on movie over 100 years in the past, including to this lengthy line of movie historical past and including to the vocabulary of this extremely efficient language of cinema that exhibits us harmless individuals dying beneath the heels of tyrants and their foot troopers.
This sequence in “Andor” was brutal and heartbreaking, and leaning on these two specific moments in cinema historical past lent them a gravitas that added even additional to it, proving as soon as once more that the filmmakers behind “Andor” have spectacular mastery over the cinematic language.
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“Andor” season 2 finishes with a three-episode finale subsequent week on Disney+.