Understanding the film The Son is like solving a mystery. The first part of the film concentrates on showing the hard labor of the main character, Olivier. Olivier is a carpenter who teaches vocational education to youths at a cabinet-making training center. The reasons for his hard labor, his working with little rest, his living without any family, and his mysterious smile are unexplained, and thus the audience must find the explanation for itself. After a miserable murderer, Francis, comes to the workshop, the film begins to manifest a nervous tinge. The tension escalates until the climactic last scene. The directors stubbornly rely on plan sequence, and thus the camera seems as if it is attached to the main character. The directors have also insisted on natural sound effects and along with the superb performance by the actors, it seems as if they have created the perfect film. Struggle for survival is an important motif in the films made by the Dardenne brothers. The film Rosetta(2000), which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, was the tale of a young girl’s intense efforts to find work and The Son is about a struggle for spiritual survival. The main character’s role was performed by Olivier Gourmet, who played a father who discriminates against illegal foreign workers in The Promise (1996), the second feature made by the Dardenne brothers. In The Son, he plays the role of a father who struggles between the emotions of revenge against and forgiveness for the murderer of his own son. Olivier Gourmet won the best leading actor award at Cannes 2002. (Yi Myung-hee)