Thanks to “Star Wars Rebels,” we’ve known that the Ghorman Massacre was something that would be coming to a head at some point during this season of “Andor.” This third batch of episodes in season 2 has given us a look at exactly how the Imperial Security Bureau baited the Ghormans into protest, how they shaped the galactic sentiment against the Ghormans, and how they crushed them with superior firepower. Now that we’ve seen the eighth episode of this second season and the massacre itself played out, we’re able to understand the utter depravity with which the Empire operated. It was so disgusting it was even revolting to Syril Karn (Kyle Soller), and that says quite a bit given he’s been so dedicated to the order brought about by the Empire.
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The Ghorman protest and ensuing massacre isn’t without echoes of films from the past, though, and there are two in particular that feel poignant and add so much to the tapestry of the episode.
Andor season 2 calls back to Casablanca and the French Resistance
There’s something poetic about how French-like the Ghorman language already sounds. It was constructed, word by word, based on French phonetics. Seeing a people with that French feeling to their language and a deep resistance against occupiers that have long been coded as militaristic Nazis has always been a powerful image in “Star Wars,” especially since “Star Wars” has always had political symbolism at its forefront.
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It’s no wonder the filmmakers would create a moment that evokes the same rousing emotional impact as a classic film that deals with the French resistance against the Nazis. In Michael Curtiz’s iconic 1942 film “Casablanca,” the assembly of French people in Rick’s Cafe Americain drown out the hatred of the Nazis by singing a heartfelt rendition of their own national anthem, “Les Marseilles.” It’s one of the best moments in a film full of great moments, and every time I watch it, it manages to bring me to tears without fail. It speaks to a people who have not lost hope in their country in the face of such evil and tyranny, and they’re willing to stand up no matter the consequences. On Ghorman, they have this same conviction as they sing their anthem in the faces of the Imperials who they sense are ready to do them violence. It’s an emotional moment in the episode and beautiful and keenly modulates this moment from “Casablanca” into “Star Wars” in a fresh and unexpected way.
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The Odessa Steps
In Sergei Eisenstein’s classic 1925 silent epic “Battleship Potemkin,” there is an infamous sequence known as “The Odessa Steps.” The film tells the story of the Russian seamen aboard the Potemkin and their mutiny during the Revolution of 1905. In the final act of the film, there is a group of civilians watching them and cheering them on, but a group of Cossacks arrive, hemming the civilians into a square from the top of a staircase and opening fire as they march upon them. This imagery has become an iconic trope throughout film history. This was the origin of the baby carriage rolling down the stairs while people were being killed, repeated most famously in “The Untouchables.” When it comes to “Star Wars,” George Lucas found inspiration in this sequence for Anakin Skywalker’s march against the Jedi Temple up the stairs alongside the 501st in “Revenge of the Sith.”
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But we get a version of it here in “Andor,” as the jackbooted Stormtroopers of the Empire trap the civilian protestors of Ghorman into the square — a square already memorializing a previous massacre on the site — as they shoot them down one by one. It evokes the same horrific feelings that Sergei Eisenstein provided on film over a hundred years ago, adding to this long line of film history and adding to the vocabulary of this highly effective language of cinema that shows us innocent people dying under the heels of tyrants and their foot soldiers.
This sequence in “Andor” was brutal and heartbreaking, and leaning on these two particular moments in cinema history lent them a gravitas that added even further to it, proving once again that the filmmakers behind “Andor” have impressive mastery over the cinematic language.
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“Andor” season 2 finishes with a three-episode finale next week on Disney+.
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