Carlos

Many recent films have addressed historical terrorism, few better than Carlos (2010). Five-and-a-half hours uncut, Olivier Assayas's miniseries addresses radical activities with brutal clarity, bolstered by Edgar Ramirez's incredible performance.

Carlos chronicles the career of arch-terrorist Illich Ramirez Sanchez, aka Carlos the Jackal (Edgar Ramirez). Collaborating with Palestinian nationalists and Marxist groups like the Japanese Red Army and West Germany's "Revolutionary Cells" Carlos subjects Europe to a reign of terror, culminating in the kidnapping of OPEC ministers at a Paris conference in 1975. As Carlos' notoriety grows he finds it harder to keep working: Arab leaders shun him, the Soviets view him as a loose cannon, and his subordinates resent his arrogance. By the early '90s Carlos is reduced from feared kingpin to hunted fugitive.

Carlos echoes dispassionate works like The Baader-Meinhof Complex in its rich depiction of terrorism. Assayas shows Carlos' world as a strange nexus of Arab nationalism, Third World ideologues and leftist radicals (with KGB backing), all conflated into the "anti-imperialist" struggle. It's shocking post-9/11 how easily Carlos' gangs operate across borders, as well as authorities' willingness to accommodate their demands. For all their sound and fury, the terrorists never achieve their objectives. Carlos spends two years plotting the death of Egypt's Anwar Sadat, only for homegrown jihadists to beat him to the punch. 

Unlike Steven Soderberg's similar Che, Carlos makes no effort to romanticize its subject. Carlos is a charismatic idealist, but a showboating thug whose recklessness catches up with him. Even his most successful operation, the OPEC kidnapping, goes awry when he murders a Libyan delegate, infuriating Gaddafi's government and complicating their escape. Enraptured by success, lionized by the media and courted by the Arab Street and KGB, his leftist posturing belies his mercenary status. In private he's a didactic bore and a chauvinist womanizer, belittling his wife (Nora Von Waldstatten) as a bourgeois poseur.

The first two episodes bristle with thrilling set pieces: kidnappings, bombings, assassinations. Assayas' staging mix excitement with docudrama detail, especially the second installment's unbearable tension. Inevitably, part three takes a sour tone as Carlos' operation unravels. Authorities kill or capture his collaborators, the terrorists reduced to pathetic retaliation. With the Cold War ending, Russia and other Eastern Bloc nations view Carlos as a liability. Eventually he's reduced to teaching in rural Sudan, an easy mark for the CIA and French intelligence.

Edgar Ramirez impresses with a well-rounded performance. Impressively multilingual, possessing considerable charm and sex appeal, Ramirez can't help but be appealing. Yet he digs beneath the appealing surface, revealing the grandstanding, violent narcissist underneath, brooking no challenges to his authority while treating others like pawns. It's a fascinating portrait of a multi-layered monster, Ramirez playing all angles to the perfect pitch. It's no slight on the flawless ensemble cast to note that Ramirez utterly dominates Carlos.

Above all else, Carlos is commendably credible. It's easy for films like this to romanticize their subject, or else caricature them as inhuman monsters. By letting Carlos' words and deeds speak for themselves, Assayas shows him as less freedom fighter than self-aggrandizing criminal.

Chicken With Plums

In Chicken With Plums (2011), Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Parronaud attempt to render the unique aesthetic of Persepolis (2007) into live action. They've certainly crafted an aesthetic feast that's imaginatively shot. Too bad the overall experience underwhelms.

In 1958, Iranian violinist Nassir (Mathieu Amalric) commits suicide. Nassir grew despondent after his long-suffering wife Faranguisse (Marie de Madeiros) destroyed his prized violin. Flashbacks of the lead-in to Nassir's death reveal why: the violin was connected with Irane (Golshifteh Farahani), Nassir's lost love. Unable to marry Irane, Nassir entered into an unhappy marriage, channeling his passion into music. Without music - or Irane - in his life, things no longer seem worthwhile.

Chicken With Plums wins praise for its ravishing visuals. Satrapi, Parronaud and cinematographer Christophe Beaucalme craft a fantasy aesthetic resembling Powell and Pressburger or, more appropriately, Jean-Pierre Jeunet. The movie's dreamlike cadence registers in verdantly colored skies, moody deep focus and double exposure. Certainly the movie doesn't lack for powerful visuals, as when Nassir sends off his mother's (Isabella Rosselini) departing soul with a violin solo. There's even a brief animated interlude explicitly recalling the directors' earlier collaboration.

Yet Chicken never really comes together. Satrapi and Parronaud conceive the story an episodic thought piece, counting down Nassir's last week on Earth. But the execution is terribly clunky. The film flits aimlessly between past and future, tone and style veering sharply from moment to moment. Filmmakers, of course, can get away with self-contained episodes in lieu of plot. But Satrapi handles it so poorly that the artifice shows; it's a collection of scenes, not a movie.

It doesn't help that Chicken feels forced. The visuals are clever but the movie slides uneasily between realistic drama and fantasy. The cutesy tone becomes unbearable at times, especially the scenes with Nassir's children or, especially, a prolonged parody of American sitcoms. Nassir and Irane's romance registers strongly, but introduced so late it throws things off-balance. Lacking what made Persepolis so effective - skillful balance of whimsy and pathos, insightful characterization - it becomes incoherent and emotionally barren.

Mathieu Amalric (Munich) makes Nassir a compelling protagonist, tormented and hanging on to shattered dreams. Golshifteh Farahani mainly looks pretty and pouty, but Maria de Madeiros (Pulp Fiction) does remarkable work showing Faranguisse's deep-seeded frustration. Eduoard Baer and Jamel Debbouze play their scenes as crude pantomime.

Chicken With Plums ultimately disappoints. For all its visual appeal, it resembles nothing so much as a poor man's Amelie, overselling self-aware silliness at the expense of genuine charm.

Indochine

Regis Wargnier's Indochine (1992) received respectful reviews and an armful of awards, including Catherine Deneuve's only Oscar nod. It's a large-scale historical romance, but more Merchant-Ivory than David Lean. Groggy's a sucker for romantic epics, yet even his patience was tried by this long, discursive movie, which can't settle on a story to tell.

Eliane Devries (Catherine Deneuve) manages a rubber plantation in 1930s Indochina, unphased by and Communist agitation. She dotes on Camille (Linh Dan Pham), her Vietnamese adoptive daughter with royal parentage. Devries pursues a reckless affair with Jean-Baptiste (Vincent Perez), an intense young naval officer. Things grow complicated when Jean-Baptiste rescues Camille during a police raid; it's love at first sight. After Jean-Baptiste is reassigned to the backwater outpost of Dragon Island, Camille abandons her revolutionary husband Tahn (Eric Nguyen) and pursues him. After Camille kills a French sailor, she and Jean-Baptiste become fugitives, with policeman Guy (Jean Yanne) pursuing them across Indochina.

Indochine makes superb use of authentic Vietnamese locations. Wargnier and photographer Francoise Catonne frame stunning images, from the sumptuous courts of pro-French mandarins to elegant Saigon and the sweltering jungle. One incredible shot (recalling Lawrence of Arabia's desert oil tanker) shows a sampan breezing through a rice paddy. The beautiful scenery and exquisite period detail make Indochine stunning to watch, even when the narrative sags.

The first half works, mainly thanks to Catherine Deneuve. Stunning at 49, Denevue proves a forceful screen presence, a matriarchal embodiment of France's imperial decadence. Reserved and forceful in public, menacing her charges with a quirt, she privately indulges her sexual appetites and taste for opium. She has little time either for Guy, her antiquated father or her native servants. Her relationship with Camille advances this further: Camille can be neither Vietnamese nor truly French. As long as Indochine focuses on Eliane, it's solid.

But Indochine grows increasingly incoherent. Wargnier strays from this main story, establishing a dozen plot points that go nowhere. Jean-Baptiste arrives at a godforsaken outpost out of Joseph Conrad, which serves as a de facto slave market. This intriguing setting vanishes after two scenes. Eliane's assistant (Dominique Blanc), fired early on, superfluously resurfaces as a lounge singer. Guy's manhunt and Tahn's Communist activism also get short shrift. Any of these strands could support a film, but Wargnier treats them so superficially they don't register.

What ultimately kills Indochine is its central romance. The scenes of Camille and Jean-Baptiste in exile prove deadening. It doesn't work, partly because there's no narrative drive but also because they've no chemistry. The two meet "cute" (as cute as one can be spattered with blood) and it's epochal love at first sight, so much that Camille leaves her husband and treks to Cochin-china in pursuit of Jean-Baptiste. Too bad there's a marked lack of depth to their relationship. Vincent Perez and Linh Dan give solid turns but can't overcome cripplingly superficial characterization.

Indochine ultimately proves frustrating. It's a grand-looking film, with appealing stars and a great sense of time and place. It's also a mess, which no amount of good acting or portentous Patrick Doyle music can obscure.

The Assassination of Trotsky

Joseph Losey is a maddeningly inconsistent director. One of the British New Wave's leading lights, he directed art house classics The Servant (1963) and The Go-Between (1970), alongside respectable stage adaptations like Galileo (1975). Balanced against them, however, are overblown turkeys like Modesty Blaise (1966) and Boom! (1968) Losey's baroque flourishes prove effective in his small-scale dramas; writ large they're insufferably pompous.

The Assassination of Trotsky (1972) isn't an outright disaster but brims with wasted potential. This international (Anglo-French-Italian) co-production never comes to grips with its fascinating subject, leaving a talented cast high and dry. Add Losey's awkward, self-important direction and you've got a puzzling failure.

Leon Trotsky (Richard Burton) lives in uneasy exile in Mexico City, publishing articles and speeches denouncing Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union. After amateur assassins botch a raid on Trotsky's compound, the Bolsheviks call in Frank Jacson (Alain Delon) for a professional killing. Jacson seduces one of Trotsky's followers (Romy Schneider) and insinuates himself into the great man's inner circle. Jacson wonders if his motives aren't more personal than political.

Historically, The Assassination of Trotsky isn't inaccurate so much as incomplete: notably, it presents Jacson as an enigma when his identity (Ramon Mercader, a Spanish Stalinist) has been known since 1953. For all the intricate reenactments, Trotsky proves maddeningly vague about its subject. The historical context surfaces only in snippets, with passing references to World War II, leftist agitation in Mexico and Trotsky's murdered children. Trotsky's ideology is even shadier: he dictates his memoirs without explaining his disagreements with Stalin or his own vision of Permanent Revolution. Essentially it's a political drama without politics.

Nicholas Mosley's script functions schematically, showing events without probing their background, presenting characters without motivation. Trotsky comes off as a humorless didact with a soft spot for his wife (Valentina Cortese). The interpretation's historically valid but isn't conducive to our caring about him. Jacson's characterization is disastrous: he's a laconic mystery man but also suffering inner conflict, albeit one evidenced only by facial tics. Losey wastes time having Jacson bicker with his girlfriend and debate politics with his GPU contact (Duilio Del Prete). Lacking either a personal or political hook, Trotsky falters.

Trotsky intricately re-stages its historical set pieces in authentic locations. This is effective so far as it goes, though the Mexican locales aren't always distinguishable from Cinecitta sets. But Losey ruins the authenticity with trite artsy flourishes. He repeatedly juxtaposes violence with Diego Rivera murals and shoots several scenes in a washed-out tint. A gory bullfight provides the most obvious symbolism this side of Oliver Stone. Egisto Macchi's strange score, mixing choral wailing with eerie whispers, seems more befitting a Dario Argento slasher flick.

Richard Burton makes a respectable Trotsky. Suitably snide and pompous, Burton matches the script's one-note characterization well. Alain Delon, on the other hand, functions like a bad self-parody: several characters even ask why he's always so quiet! Romy Schneider's just irritating. Valentina Cortese gives a warm performance, providing the film's most sympathetic character. Interesting supporting players - Duilio Del Prete's spymaster, Enrico Maria Salerno's Mexican fanatic, Michael Forest as Trotsky's American bodyguard - are relegated to the margins.

The Assassination of Trotsky has long been considered a monumental bomb. In a perverse way, that's giving it too much credit. Trotsky's not a terrible film, just a mediocre one.

Le Cercle Rouge

Jean-Pierre Melville returns to the neo-noir with Le Cercle Rouge (1970), his next-to-last film. Similar in structure to Jules Dassin's Rififi, it's another stylized tale of French cops and robbers.

Corey (Alain Delon) receives a tip for a jewel heist right after leaving jail. He teams up with fugitive Vogel (Gian Maria Volonte) and Jansen (Yves Montand), a sharpshooting ex-cop. The heist goes perfectly, but the criminals run afoul of Captain Mattei (Andre Bouvril), already tracking Vogel. Mattei is a ruthless investigator who uses methods fair and foul to trap the crooks.

Le Cercle Rouge sees Melville return to his favorite theme, criminals bound to a code of honor. This theme is introduced comically: Corey doesn't bat an eye when Vogel sneaks into his car trunk. Vogel soon repays the favor by shooting two rival gangsters. Jansen suffers from guilt and alcoholism but proves meticulous. The three men form an unlikely comradeship: even when one backs out of the proceeds he risks his life to rescue the others. This contrasts with the unscrupulous Mattei, who's not above entrapping informers and outright trickery to nab his prey. Melville's contrast of criminal chivalry with police ruthlessness prefigures John Woo and Michael Mann's crime sagas.

Le Cercle Rouge is an exercise in style, its simple plot and abstract characters secondary to Melville's direction. He presages Fred Zinneman's The Day of the Jackal in showing the criminals' preparations and the police manhunt in meticulous, almost tedious detail. The movie builds tension efficiently, paying off with the actual heist. Running over ten minutes, it's a remarkable sequence, all impenetrable shadows and tense sounds, staged without music and little dialogue. The more conventional action and outdoor photography pale in comparison.

Alain Delon repeats his minimalist turn from Le Samourai, adding a bushy mustache and wry sense of humor. Yves Montand underplays Jansen's alcoholism and moral shadiness quite well. Even Gian Maria Volonte, so delightfully hammy in his Spaghetti Westerns, dials down as a desperate, hunted criminal. The standout is Andre Bouvril, making his final appearance. Best-known as an amiable comedy star, Bouvril plays brilliantly against-type as the implacable inspector.

Le Cercle Rouge won't offer much new to Melville fans. From this director though, more of the same certainly isn't a bad thing.

Le Samourai

Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samourai (1967) is a low-key masterwork. Melville influenced two generations of filmmakers with his stoic protagonist and meditative direction. Yet this striking neo-noir occupies a class of its own.

Hitman Jef Costello (Alain Delon) kills a nightclub owner and gets nabbed by the police. Though he establishes an alibi with a girlfriend (Nathalie Delon), Costello remains the Superintendent's (Francois Perrier) chief suspect. Jef dodges the cops and his double-crossing employer, being drawn to Valerie (Cathy Rosier), a nightclub musician who refused to identify him to the police. Yet Jef's employer offers him another job which hits closer to home.

Le Samourai oozes style. Melville provides meditative long takes and extended sequences, all conveyed with a minimum of dialogue. The opening shots of Jef in his lonely apartment set the tone, oppressive yet absorbing. The sparse plot allows Melville to focus on set pieces, from the prolonged police line-up to a frantic subway chase. The best scene has Jef ferreting out a wiretap, using his pet canary's chirping to distract eavesdroppers. Melville successful weds expressive direction with plays on genre tropes.

Melville cribs his plot from the noir This Gun for Hire (1942) but borrows the rituals and language of Westerns and samurai films. The title posits Jef as a modern-day ronin, a masterless killer cast adrift by his inscrutable code. Constantly alone, he uses people as tools without forging meaningful connections. Viewers might connect Jef to Clint Eastwood's Man With No Name but lacks his grudging morality. If Jef resembles any Leone character, it's Lee Van Cleef's Angel Eyes: "When I'm paid, I always see the job through!"

Alain Delon defines stoic. Jef rarely changes expressions or registers emotion, a Zen killer determined to control his emotions with his fate. Delon proves compelling through raw charisma, chiseled looks and cryptic gestures. Is this a great performance or a living embodiment of the Kuleshov effect? Either way Delon makes a unique antihero. 

Nathalie Delon (Alain's then-wife) plays Jef's beleaguered girlfriend. Cathy Rosier gets the most interesting character, a girl with motives as indecipherable as Jef's. Francois Perrier (Z) plays the dogged police inspector, with Jacques Leroy as a sleazy go-between.

Le Samourai is a classic. Its protagonist presaged four decades of antisocial antiheroes from The Conversation to Drive, but Melville's stellar craftsmanship remains the gold standard.

Army of Shadows

In between gritty crime dramas (Le Samourai, Red Circle), Jean-Pierre Melville delivers Army of Shadows (1969). This unsparingly grim film demolishes Hollywood's romantic view of the French Resistance. If anything, it's too downbeat for its own good.

Mild-mannered engineer Philippe Gerbier (Lino Ventura) organizes a Resistance cell. After escaping German custody in 1942, his network engages in various activities against the Vichy puppet regime. They ferret out informers, rescue Allied POWs and smuggle supplies from London. Things go awry when Gerbier's aide Lepercq (Paul Crachet) is arrested and tortured by the Gestapo - a development leading to Gerbier's own arrest. With the help of fearless Mathilde (Simone Signoret) the Resistance rescues Gerbier. But Gerbier might not return the favor when the Nazis entrap Mathilde into becoming an informant.

Melville works off a Joseph Kessel novel but his own Resistance experience undoubtedly shapes Army of Shadows. The protagonists are never less than heroic, but their actions seem almost pointless in the grand scheme of war. Every Resistance success is met by a setback, be it a violent reprisal or a chance arrest, and their British sponsors barely trust them. Even Gerbier's visit to London is marred by an air raid and a near-disastrous return. The Germans and their Vichy allies have debased France, their violence forcing Gerbier's cell into squalid acts of reprisal. Melville's lack of sensationalism is Army's strong point.

Besides a striking black-and-blue palette, all brooding shadows and dark corridors, Melville visually emphasizes the war's dehumanization. He opens with SS troops parading past the Arc de Triomphe, a tone-setting juxtaposition. Melville repeats key images - prisoners bound in a chair, the framed slats of buses, basements and prison cells - that show France's violation, physical and psychic, by German occupation.  Melville utilizes New Wave jump cuts and narration to great effect: witness the tense scene where Gerbier gets a shave from a Petainist barber, or Gerbier's refusing to flee Gestapo machine guns.

Army of Shadows is so bleak it's often hard to watch. One admires Melville for avoiding escapist thrills, yet there's little room to breathe amidst the oppressive atmosphere. Our heroes' only reward comes when Charles De Gaulle decorates a Resistance leader (which angered French critics, coming a year after the May '68 uprisings). In this context, the downer ending proves a foregone conclusion. Melville's episodic plot forces Army to work moment-by-moment, not always to its benefit. Fortunately, Meville's cast provides an engaging human element.

Lino Ventura scores with a quiet turn. He's outwardly stiff and no-nonsense, his inner conflict betrayed only by snatches of narration. Simone Signoret gets a standout role as a seemingly ordinary yet endlessly resourceful Frenchwoman. Christian Barbier plays Le Bison, a glowering Legionnaire who proves unexpectedly sensitive. Paul Meurrise and Jean-Pierre Cassel play unsentimental Resistance chiefs.

Army of Shadows isn't a film for those seeking conventional excitement. For those who like their war movies dark and downscale, it's a perfect match.

Outside the Law (2010)

Algeria's War for Independence remains a contentious subject. Not a far-off colony like Indochina, Algeria was an incorporated region of France with a large settler population (pied noirs), making its 1954-1962 revolution especially bitter. Besides the conflict's nastiness - widespread torture, terrorist bombings and up to 1,000,000 deaths - the fallout embroiled France in several military coups, a domestic terror campaign and an influx of pied noirs and loyalist Algerians (and massacre of those remaining in Algeria). Algeria descended into a brutal dictatorship, more recently experiencing civil war with Islamist groups. Algerian immigration to France remains a tense issue between these nations.

Outside the Law (2010) provides a controversial take on this "War Without a Name." It compares favorably to past portrayals: Gillo Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers (1966) is masterful Algerian propaganda cleverly framed as a docudrama, while Jean Larteguy's novel The Centurions invests its hard-bitten paratroopers with nationalist angst. Rachid Boucherab's film is less flattering towards FLN and France alike. Its ambiguity and diverse protagonists make it refreshingly complex.

Three Algerian brothers, separated by 1945's Setif Massacre, reunite ten years later in southern France. Abdelkadr (Sami Bouajila) spent the intervening decade in prison for nationalist agitation; Moussaud (Roschdy Zem) is an ex-paratrooper who survived Dien Bien Phu; and Said (Jamel Debouzze), an amoral criminal. The three form the nucleus of an FLN cell within France. They target both French officials and rival MNA nationalists, aided by French leftists. Abdelkadr's single-mindedness alienates his brothers, with Massoud pining over his wife (Louiza Nehar) and Said's devotion to his nightclub undermining his commitment. The French government brings in Colonel Faivre (Bernard Blancan), who forms a paramilitary unit - the Red Hand - to beat FLN at its own game.

Outside the Law re-frames Algeria's struggle as a stylish gangster movie. Bouchareb stages smoke-filled meetings in restaurants and night clubs, clothes his heroes in pinstripe suits and lifts set pieces (Said stabbing a traitorous Caid, a mistaken car bombing) from The Godfather. The FLN certainly appear as brutal thugs, whether extorting supporters or murdering rival nationalists. The heroes have the panache of the Corleones in their period duds and colorful assassinations (including a daring raid on a police station), but Western viewers may have trouble cheering them on.

Not that this ambiguity ill-serves the drama. Indeed, Bocuherab presents three commendably complex protagonists. Abdelkadr is a frightening extremist willing to provoke police raids and sacrifice anyone in furtherance of independence. Massoud proves more sympathetic, his bitterness and family loyalty drawing him to a fight he's ambivalent about, while Said remains interested in business. A subplot has Said grooming an Algerian boxer (Assadd Bouab) to be France's heavyweight champion. The FLN views this as unacceptable: any Algerian glory, sporting or otherwise, must accrue to Algeria.

The movie came under fire for historical license. FLN activities in France were more modest than the film suggests, while Boucherab's comparing their exploits to the wartime Resistance will rankle some viewers. More contentious is the staging of the Setif Massacre: hardly an unprovoked "police riot," French reprisals came after Muslim rioters killed 103 Europeans. But Alistair Horne notes that "even if one were to accept the very lowest figure [of 1,000 Muslims killed]… it still represents… ten-to-one over-kill." Boucherab correctly marks Setif as the catalyst for Algerian nationalism and, along with a childhood eviction, the protagonists' formative event.

Outside the Law grows more predictable in its second half. With Faivre's arrival the movie falls into cops-and-robbers plot conventions, with man-hunting, chases and shootouts. Fortunately, Boucherab compensates with engaging set pieces and a downbeat ending. And the script by Boucherab and Olivier Lorelle remains commendably lean, with few subplots and only a wisp of romance (Abdelkadr's flirtations with leftist Helene [Sabrina Segvecou]) to distract from the main story.

Most of the actors worked on Boucherab's Days of Glory (2006), and all excel here. Sami Bouajila makes Abdelkadr a single-minded revolutionary to make Tom Courtenay's Strelnikov flee in terror. Roschdy Zem is perfect as a man scarred both physically and mentally, while Jamel Debouzze makes an agreeable hustler. Bernard Blancan is a ferocious villain but no Colonel Matthieu. The female roles are sparse, though Chafia Boudra's matriarch gets some choice dialogue.

Outside the Law falls just short of greatness. Despite a familiar conclusion, it's still a powerful, revisionist look at a bloody conflict.

A Very Long Engagement

I'm one of the relatively few people who was left cold by Amelie (2001), Jean-Pierre Jeunets's insufferably twee romantic fantasy. Still, there were two things I liked about it: Jeunet's inventive imagery and the impossibly-cute Audrey Tautou. If only they had a worthwhile story to work with...

Well, A Very Long Engagement (2004) fits the bill. A wonderfully moving genre-bending romance, it makes up for a thin plot with a treasure trove of incredible images, great performances and genuine poignance.

During World War I, five French soldiers are convicted of self-mutilation and sentenced to execution. And yet the sentence is never carried out, leaving Mathilde (Audrey Tautou), the fiancee of soldier Manech (Gaspard Ulliel), to investigate what happened. Her investigation uncovers levels of military and political corruption, and her contact with dozens of veterans and widows teaches Mathilde the human cost of the war.

A Very Long Engagement isn't much on story but it succeeds as poignant visual poetry. Jeunet is an endlessly creative director and Engagement is a joy to watch, from the diverse color schemes to the stylized fantasy scenes. The film features an endless array of beautiful set pieces, especially Mathilde and Manech's childhood friendship and Elodie's (Jodie Foster) efforts to get a child to earn her husband (Jean-Pierre Darroussin) exemption from the draft, that will tug at the hardest heart strings. The war scenes are more derivative, with mass machine gunning a la Gallipoli and the row of crosses out of Oh! What a Lovely War, but are effective enough all the same. While the plot doesn't quite hang together, these individual episodes make for compelling, emotional viewing.

Jeunet and Guillaume Laurant's script deftly mixes elements of melodrama, war film and detective story. The film is anti-war without being especially strident, choosing to focus on the human side of the war. Elodie's saga makes for especially tragic viewing, and the finale in the hospital/hangar is the height of harrowing irony. Tina Lombardi's (Marion Cotillard) one-woman vendetta against the French officer corps seems almost a rational response to the bureaucratic indifference and corruption that sent millions of French soldiers to their deaths.

There are plenty of locations across France, intricate use of flashbacks and fantasy and a colorful ensemble cast, but Jeunet never loses sight of the love story. The film uniquely handles its the romance: Manech and Mathilde are barely together onscreen, but an extended montage at the mid-point sells the audience on Mathilde's single-minded dedication. Certainly, with all of the other romances we see destroyed by war, we hope for a happy ending. The conclusion might be a cheat in other films, but it seems perfectly appropriate here.

Audrey Tautou is superb. She's effortlessly charming as always, and the scope of her quest serves to make her undying love of Manech immeasuribly poignant. Marion Cotillard's (Inception) whore-turned-assassin and Jodie Foster's mournful housewife get the showiest scenes. Ticky Holgado's shifty detective gets some of the film's funniest scenes.

A Very Long Engagement is a lovely film. With its marvelous imagery and clever romance, it's sure to please all but the most hardened viewers.

Grand Illusion

Jean Renoir's Grand Illusion (1937) is an overly earnest pacifist statement that hasn't aged very well. Today, it's perhaps most interesting as the blueprint for every prisoner-of-war movie ever made.

During World War I, a pair of French pilots - Captain Boeldieu (Pierre Fresnay) and Lieutenant Marechal (Jean Gabin) - are shot down, and taken prisoner, by German Captain Von Rauffenstein (Erich Von Stroheim). The aristocratic Boeldieu and Rauffenstein strike up a friendship, while the working-class Marechal is left in the cold. The Frenchmen arrive in a POW camp, are transferred after an escape attempt, and finally end up in Wintersborn, a forbidding fortress deep in Germany. Boeldieu finds Rauffenstein commanding the camp, but this doesn't stop him, Marechal and the Jewish Rosenthal (Marcel Dalio) from plotting an escape.

Grand Illusion's artistry and influence are undeniable. The entire prisoner-of-war genre rests on Renoir's foundation: Stalag 17 reproduced the scenario for laughs, Bridge on the River Kwai turned Boeldieu and Rauffenstein's friendship into twisted gamesmanship and The Great Escape's tunnelling scenes are lifted almost verbatim. Also, a scene of French POWs defiantly singing La Marseillaise no doubt inspired a similar passage in Casablanca. For its cinematic importance, Grand Illusion is on a list with Birth of a Nation, Battleship Potemkin and Citizen Kane.

Renoir's film is also beautifully made. Christian Matras's expressive photography is quite striking, and there's an interesting mix of sets and beautiful French locations. Renoir can certainly stage a setpiece, and makes use of beautiful symbols (Boeldieu's rose) throughout. There are no battle scenes (or even much sign of a war) but a viewer doesn't miss it when the drama is so compelling. On a human level, though, the film's effect is mixed.

Fans of Grand Illusion see a moving anti-war film, but I find it stiff and awkward. Renoir's commentary on class differences is fudged: Boeldieu and Rauffenstein are much more appealing than our proletariat protagonists, who seem almost clownish. Similarly, Renoir overdoses on the humanism: behind the lines, French and Germans are good pals, except where class distinctions interfere. Escaping prisoners are shot with greatest reluctance, or even allowed to escape. This "brotherhood of man" approach culminates in a treacly, overlong finale, with Marechal and Rosenthal holing up with a pretty German widow (Dita Parlo). These scenes would be powerful in a more balanced film, but we're so invested in the officer relationship that what happens to these doofs doesn't register.

Pierre Fresnay and Erich Von Stroheim own the film. Their relationship is beautifully rendered and tragic, and the movie loses steam when they leave the scene. By contrast, Jean Gabin and Marcel Dalio's characters aren't very interesting; their only trait is war-weariness and they register as symbols rather than characters. Dita Parlo makes an impression despite minimal screen time.

Grand Illusion is not my cup of tea. It has strong elements that make it worthwhile, and no one can deny its importance to film history. However, it hasn't stood the test of time nearly as well as, say, All Quiet on the Western Front.

Army of Crime

It seems like all of the interesting World War II movies are now coming out of Europe. Save an occasional gem like Valkyrie, Hollywood's recent takes on the subject have been cliched, forgettable garbage like Defiance and Flags of Our Fathers, showing perhaps that America's fascination with killing Nazis and Japs has finally reached a saturation point. (Forget Inglourious Basterds, which is unique only in a terrible Tarantino way.) Recent European efforts like Black Book and Downfall show, however, that there are still interesting stories from history's biggest conflict if filmmakers are willing to veer from Hollywood convention.

Add Army of Crime to that list. This little-seen French film from 2009 provides a remarkably complex portrait of Nazi-occupied France beyond the usual glamorous resistance cliches. It's a truly excellent film, a taut thriller that provides a thoughtful portrayal of a painful time in French history.

At the height of the German occupation of France, a disparate group of left-wing resistance fighters emerges. Among the prominent members are Missak Manouchian (Simon Abkarian), an Armenian emigre who survived the Turkish genocide of WWI only to find himself in the midst of the Holocaust; Thomas Elek (Gregoire Leprince-Ringuet), a hotheaded, impulsive young Hungarian Communist; and Marcel Rayman (Robinson Stevenin), a Polish immigrant athlete. Along with an additional gaggle of Jews, immigrants and leftists, they form the Manouchian Group, engaging in a campaign of assassinations and terrorist bombings against the Nazis. However, their efforts bear little fruit, as Nazi reprisals discourage popular uprising, and the Paris police crack down on the Resistance, ensuring that the Manouchian Group's days are numbered.

American films from Hangmen Also Die! to The Train tend to present the Resistance in an idealized light, with fearless Frenchmen/Czechs/Dutch/etc. uniting against Nazi tyranny. The international co-production Is Paris Burning? admirably tried to show the complexity of the French Resistance and the difficulties of mounting an uprising, but that over-ambitious epic collapsed under its own weight. Occasionally a more nuanced foreign effort appears, like Melville's Army of Shadows (1969) or Verhoeven's Soldier of Orange (1977), but these are few and far between.

Army of Crime points up an uncomfortable truth: most French people willingly collaborated with the Nazis, whether out of fear or ideological solidarity. An early scene has Thomas confronted by an anti-Semitic creep, and later the arrest of the gang's key figures is abetted by ordinary Frenchmen. The local police work hat in hand with the Nazis, with the police Commissioner's (Yann Tregouet) brutal methods impressing even the SS. A German officer proudly remarks that a mass round-up of Resistance suspects went off without a single German present. Constantly, our protagonists claim that they're fighting Germans, and indeed their targets are almost exclusively Wehrmacht and SS troops, but it's their fellow Frenchmen who ultimately doom them.

As elsewhere in Europe, the Germans harnessed French nationalism by declaring their counterinsurgency a crusade against Communism. The Manouchian Group was a particularly appealing target, its members a mixture of immigrants, Jews, Communists, and former members of the International Brigades who fought Franco in Spain: hardly a collection of patriotic Frenchmen! Any sputters of serious resistance were met with hideously disproportionate reprisals, "fair but merciless repression" in the words of a propaganda broadcaster. Even after the liberation, surviving leftist groups were shafted by the Gaullists, whose triumphal march into Paris gave them carte blanche in the world's eyes.

Army of Crime accompanies this fascinating thematic content with an engrossing story and characters. Our protagonists are an eclectic bunch whose dedication to the cause is matched only by their ill-experience. Missak is the most interesting of the bunch; having survived one genocide in Armenia, he's not willing to let another take place, yet his reluctance to kill hampers his effectiveness as a guerilla. Monique (Lola Naymark), Marcel's girlfriend, wants to join the cell even though she's sleeping with a police inspector (Jean-Pierre Darroussin) to ensure Marcel is treated well in prison. Unquestionably their portrayal is romanticized; the movie makes a point that they won't kill innocent bystanders, even Germans, which seems hard to swallow. But they're certainly compelling, and the film's grimly down-to-earth atmosphere balances out the potential for hero-worship.

The biggest complaint that can be leveled against Army of Crime is that its story structure follows the standard Resistance film framework; veterans of WWII movies can see most plot developments and character arcs develop well in advance. But when the film's events are so gripping and well-staged, why complain? And in any case, its thoughtful and unusually complex portrayal of events overwhelms such minor concerns.

Director Robert Guediguian helms a fine production. The film is slow-moving but never boring, with beautiful photography and well-staged set-pieces. A few mildly-annoying style choices crop up: several terrorist attacks are interrupted by flashy slow motion and ill-advised, iconographic double exposures of the Resistance fighter committing said act. But these are minor blips in otherwise commendable film.

Simon Abkarian (Persepolis) is perfectly cast as Missak, a passionate intellectual who has trouble becoming a man of action. Virginie Ledoyen is equally strong as his devoted wife, just as willing to sacrifice herself for the cause. Robinson Stevenin and Gregoire Leprince-Ringuent do fine work as the Resistance's young hot-heads whose devotion outweights common sense. Yann Tregouet and Jean-Pierre Darroussin and play notably slimy villains.

Overall, Army of Crime is a stellar depiction of the French Resistance and Nazi occupation of France.

Z

Constantin Costa-Gavras crafts a masterpiece of political cinema with Z (1969). Based on Vassilis Vassilikos's fictionalized account of a right-wing assassination in 1960s Greece, it's a starkly realistic, disturbing look at a country's descent into dictatorship.

Greece, 1963. (The location is never explicitly stated but it's rather obvious.) The leader of the Parliamentary opposition (Yves Montand) holds a rally to protest the right-wing government's hardline militarism and repression of demonstrators. The Deputy is mortally wounded in a strange incident involving a speeding three-wheeler driven by a pair of losers (Renato Salvatori and Marcel Bozzuffi). At first it seems like an accident, but as the local magistrate (Jean-Louis Trintigant) sifts through the evidence, he realizes the evidence doesn't add up. It soon becomes apparent that the Deputy's death was a murder, and that it involves a conspiracy reaching into the highest levels of government.

In the bitter aftermath of Watergate, Vietnam and a decade of assassinations, Hollywood churned out tons of conspiracy movies, replete with an all-seeing, perfidious government coldly murdering citizens who challenged the status quo and searched for its secrets. Aside from All the President's Men, few achieved anything like realism, viewing Richard Nixon's low-level thuggery as emblematic of a corrupt, repressive, improbably-efficient fascist state. Films like The Parallax View and Three Days of the Condor are cartoonish fantasies, no more realistic than The X-Files, capturing the paranoid zeitgeist rather than reality of their time. Post-9/11 fears of globalization, terrorism, warrantless wiretapping and corporate perfidy and have made the genre "relevant" again, with the same tricks and tropes trotted out (Michael Clayton, The International).

Based on a true incident, Z stands head-and-shoulders above its Hollywood counterparts. While American liberals imagined a repressive police state, Greeks were actually living it. As a small country on the front lines of the Cold War, Greece could hardly afford to remain ideological neutral in the struggle against Communism. Aided and abetted by our government, the Greek military took power in 1967, establishing one of the most repressive regimes this side of the Iron Curtain.

The portrait of government conspiracy here is chillingly plausible. The opening sets the tone: an agricultural briefing on mildew is directly compared to "insidious" Communist influences, and one individual blames hippies and leftists for an increase in solar flares! The government claims to be "neutral" and above politics but their vitriol and apocalyptic rhetoric are directed at the Left, accompanied on occasion by active repression. The police doesn't hire super-efficient assassins to silence dissent, but low-level street thugs with a high failure rate. The overall sloppiness of the government most striking; the conspiracy is really transparent and obvious, and yet it seems unstoppable.

Costa-Gavras doesn't obtain the documentary objectivity of Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers: it's obvious where his sympathies lie, and he stacks the dramatic deck against his antagonists, who are delusional blowhards ("Dreyfus was guilty!") or, presaging Oliver Stone's JFK, a scummy homosexual. But lack of objectivity is hardly a flaw in this case, especially with the message made so forcefully. It's a remarkably angry film, undercutting its triumphant climax with a chillingly subversive coda, showing justice coming to naught. In a cruel irony, bringing down one oppressive government merely serves to bring a far worse one to power.

Costa-Gavras's direction is modest but effective, making excellent use of imagery and Francoise Bonnot's editing. There are a few action scenes but they're well-integrated into the story. The film's atmosphere isn't so much dark and sinister as uncertain and foreboding; it obtains an admirable degree of clinical realism. Mikis Theodorakis's score is another highlight.

Yves Montand and Irene Pappas (The Guns of Navarone) get top-billing for what amount to extended cameos. Montand makes a strong impression, but Pappas is reduced to meaningful glances and ambiguous flashbacks. Jean-Lous Trintigant (Is Paris Burning?) gets the best role, as the impartial investigator driven to find the truth. Jacques Perrin gets a nice role as an inquisitive journalist. An interesting collection of actors plays government officials and thugs, with Francois Perrier, Pierre Dux and Renato Salvatori (Burn!) among them.

Z is one of the best films of the 1960's, and a truly remarkable example of political cinema. Forceful, angry and powerful, it retains its power when many of its peers and imitators have faded into anachronism.

Is Paris Burning?

Part The Longest Day, part Battle of Algiers, Is Paris Burning? (1966) is a muddled attempt at a cinema verite epic. The interesting story, well-shot action scenes and surprisingly brisk pace keep it from being a chore, but its convoluted plot, nonexistent characters and overwritten script prevent it from achieving full potential.

August, 1944. Allied armies tear through exhausted German armies in France, but the Allies seem to neglect Paris. General Dietrich Von Choltitz (Gert Frobe) is appointed to defend Paris, and is personally ordered by Adolf Hitler (Billy Frick) to destroy the city if its fall becomes imminent. While Choltitz equivocates, the French Resistance's disparate factions debate how to handle the situation. The situation comes to a head when the impetuous FFI starts seizing government buildings, initating vicious streetfighting with the Germans. All the while, Choltitz prepares to destroy the city, while the Resistance desperately tries to convince the Americans under General Omar Bradley (Glenn Ford) to liberate Paris.

Is Paris Burning? is ambitious but frustrating. The overwritten script - credited to Francis Ford Coppola and Gore Vidal, but also doctored by French and German writers - has little sense of scope or dramatic economy. It's not that the film is long or slow - for a 173-minute feature, it's surprisingly fast-moving - but it is clogged, confused and only sporadically gripping. The relationships between the disparate Resistance factions are poorly defined, and the poorly-drawn characters don't help. Instead of being complex, the film is convoluted and often dramatically inert, with an occasional brilliant set-piece or inspired detail bringing it alive.

The cast consists of more or less every French actor working in 1966. Like most Hollywood "all-star" epics, however, the sheer number of stars prevents them from registering as characters. I spotted Alain Delon (The Leopard), Leslie Caron (Gigi), Jean-Louis Trintigant (Z) and Jean-Paul Belmondo (Breathless), but the rest - even favorites like Michel Piccoli and Michel Lonsdale - are virtually invisible. Few of these actors make an impression, save Pierre Vaneck's Major who convinces the Allies to liberate Paris, and their inclusion is of value only to star spotters.

The Americans are even worse off: Orson Welles is good as a Swedish diplomat caught between the two sides, and Anthony Perkins (The Tin Star) has a decent bit, but Kirk Douglas, Glenn Ford and Robert Stack are poorly cast and badly used. Their inclusion seems a cynical grab at American box office, but one wonders if any Kirk Douglas fan would want to watch him putter around in a nightshirt for two minutes.

The one actor who comes off perfectly is Gert Frobe (Goldfinger). He's given a difficult role, a dedicated career soldier who chafes at the needless destruction of Paris. The 20 July plot is alluded to a few times - in the opening, Choltitz visits the headquarters where Hitler narrowly survived - highlighting the General's dilemna: by 1944 the Wehrmacht high command recognized Hitler as insane, and were torn between their duty as soldiers and revulsion at obeying a lunatic. Frobe gives a performance of unusual subtlety, making Choltitz a sympathetic, complex and ultimately tragic character.

Fortunately, Is Paris Burning? does have its share of virtues. Rene Clement's direction is straightforward yet striking, with heavy use of Paris locations and deep focus photography. Archival footage is often overused, but the actual battle scenes are intense and gripping. Maurice Jarre's jaunty, celebratory score is among his very best. A number of individual set-pieces - a night-time massacre of French students, Resistance fighters humorlessly interrupting a wedding, Jean-Paul Belmondo and girlfriend using their bicycles as cover against German snipers - are quite striking. And despite the problematic road getting there, the incredibly joyous, exuberant ending, with all of Paris celebrating the end of the nightmarish occupation, is a wonderful conclusion.

Is Paris Burning? is a mixed bag, a fairly middling historical epic. Perhaps a TV miniseries would have given the story a proper depth and scope; perhaps a better-drawn script would have helped with the convoluted-plot and poorly-rendered characters. Still, it has enough high points to make it worth a look.

Persepolis

Having recently fallen in love with Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis books, it was only natural that I should check out the Oscar-nominated film adaptation. Fortunately, Persepolis (2007) keeps Satrapi's work intact: her autobiographical tale of a child's life in Revolutionary Iran, and adolescence abroad, rings true through a perfect mixture of humor, pathos and personal tragedy.

Iran, 1979. Marjane "Marji" Satrapi (Gabrielle Lopes, Chiara Mastroianni) is a precocious child wrapped up in fantasy and materialism. Her parents (Catherine Denevue and Simon Abkarian) protest the Shah's regime, which collapses after the Shah flees. However, Marjane and her family find the Ayatollah Khomeini's new Islamic regime even worse, with alcohol outlawed, women forced to don veils, and a destructive war with Iraq making life unbearable. Teenaged Marjane is sent to live in Vienna, where she flits around the edges of counter-culture, struggles with romance and education, is stereotyped as a terrorist, and ends up homeless and destitute. She comes home to Iran, only to find herself a stranger even in her home country.

Persepolis is an excellent mixture of honesty and humanism, conveyed through its beautifully-realized protagonist. Satrapi is wonderfully forthcoming about herself: she presents episodes where, as a child, she leads an attack on the son of a policeman. Later, she condemns an innocent man to prison so she won't miss a date. Often narcissistic and self-destructive, Marji is no intellectual rebel or quirky heroine with all the answers, just an ordinary adolescent into music, boys and blue jeans, her faults and confusion magnified by the situation. Even transforming herself into a "modern woman" is a limited success: Iran remains repressive, and Marji is stuck in a rotten marriage which enhances her predicament.

We know, of course, that Satrapi went on to be a successful cartoonist and author, but Marji at age 18, penniless in the Vienna streets, would have no way of knowing it. Despite the depressing nature of the material, and its sad conclusion, Persepolis pulsates with joy and life-affirming happiness, with Satrapi's caustic wit and shrewd observations providing plenty of humor. The story's real-life conclusion provides an extra-textual delight.

The movie skims over the story's historical and political background, but this is forgivable. Background about Iran's history and the Shah's rise are presented in amusing vignettes, exactly how a child would digest a difficult history lesson. As in so many revolutions, the ideal revolution is subverted with something far worse: while the Shah arrests and tortures dissidents, the Ayatollah executes them. And for Iranians (and women especially), life becomes unbearable. Satrapi, who lost friends and relatives to both regimes, cannot be called objective, but Persepolis has the ring of truth throughout. Specific incidents and anecdotes are presented with vivid clarity: being harrassed by cops for "indecency," the underground parties and blackmarket music tapes, the disfigurement and death of friends in the war.

Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud keep the comic's visual style intact: the simple, stark black-and-white visual style perfectly enhances the feeling of loss and nostalgia. Despite the story's episodic nature, it has a fast and urgent pace, flowing perfectly. The animation enhances the material with creative uses of montage, perfectly portraying the difficult backstory, and specific sequences - particularly Marji's descent into depression - are made extremely powerful. The voice work is uniformly excellent.

Some minor omissions aside, Persepolis is a fabulous, near-perfect adaptation of the graphic novel, and one of its decade's best animated films.

PS: Happy Father's Day!

World Film History: Strike and The Passion of Joan of Arc

I've been slacking off on reviewing the movies in my World Film History class, largely because I'm rather ambivalent about reviewing silent movies. First of all, my experience in this film is fairly limited. Second of all, I find them largely alien to my 21st Century sensibilities. Thirdly, in case you haven't noticed, I've been seeing movies at an usually-rapid rate and can't review every movie I see. And finally, I'm fucking tired after a four-hour night class on Wednesday.

I'll try and backtrack for the last two weeks, though, and take a stab at reviewing Sergei Eisenstein's Strike (1925) and Carl Theodore Dryer's The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928). Both of these films are brilliant, and the only other silent I've enjoyed as much is King Vidor's The Crowd (1928). (I saw that a year ago though, so don't expect a review anytime soon.)

Strike



Strike was Sergei Eisenstein's first major film, before the more famous Battleship Potemkin and October. Despite its comparative obscurity, Strike is a viscerally powerful masterpiece, transcending its origins as Bolshevik propaganda and being a compelling work of cinematic art.

In turn-of-the-century Russia, a group of oppressed factory workers go on strike, demanding an increase in wages and fewer work hours. When management refuses to negotiate, the workers seize control of the factory, and form a makeshift community. The police react by sending a team of spies and provocateurs to disrupt the strike, but most of them are quickly rooted out. Unable to disrupt the strike from within, the authorities resort to brute force, sending in a company of dragoons to slaughter the strikers.

Plotwise, Eisenstein's film is a straightforward piece of Communist agitprop. The righteous workers and peasants opposing the bloated, cigar-smoking capitalists and their jack-booted oppressors is the exact opposite of subtlety. In this case, it's the presentation that matters, and Strike is the perfect example of Soviet montage. Eisenstein uses every cinematic tool to convey his message, and the result is a truly striking piece of work.

Eisenstein's direction and editing are marvellous. The film is full of striking images, from Eisenstein's clever use of double-exposure (the animals representing the police spies), excellent set-pieces (the scemounted dragoons riding among an apartment's high rises is even more intense than the Odessa steps scene in Potemkin), and a few bizarre touches of surrealism (dwarves dancing on a table as the police interrogate a striker). Perhaps most astonishing is the finale, where the gory slaughter of a bull is juxtaposed with Cossacks gunning down unarmed strikers (an image appropriated by Coppola in Apocalypse Now). The result is a visceral, gut-wrenching feeling of violence, that remains with the viewer long after the film ends. Even if the message is clunky, dated and unappealing, the experience is unquestionably brilliant.

The Passion of Joan of Arc



Carl Theodore Dryer's The Passion of Joan of Arc is equailly masterful. Besides being a compelling "film of conscience" a la A Man for All Seasons, Dreyer's direction, cinematography and editing are just as striking as Eisenstein's, albeit less flamboyant. It also contains a truly astonishing performance by Renee Jeanne Falconetti.

Joan of Arc (Renee Jeanne Falconetti), the famous French patriot and military leader, is put on trial for heresy by the Catholic Church and the English occupiers. Joan firmly resists attempts to coerce her confession, from threats of torture to challenges to her spirituality, but she refuses to bend - until directly confronted with execution. Joan repents, only to instantly regret it, and she accepts her martyrdom

Intended as an early "docudrama", Joan of Arc is an intense, gripping cinematic experience. Joan is a wonderfully convincing, heartbreaking protagonist, with pleading, bewildered eyes and a haunting innocence; her interrogators think she's a clever trickster rather than the simple, honest girl she is. The straightforward cinematography, using extreme close-ups of makeup-less faces (and tops of heads), quick editing, and a near-verbatim trial transcript create an incredibly intense and oppressive atmosphere, through marvellous simplicity. The final scene, with its quick-editing rioting, smacks a bit much of Eisenstein, but it works well-enough. The ingenious choral soundtrack by Voices of Light enhances the experience.

Falconetti gives a truly mesmerizing performance. Hers is one of the great silence performances, conveying fear, anguish, faith and resignation with striking facial expessions. The typage casting of the church authorities, with flabby faces, glistening boils and cavernous wrinkles, is equally effective, but it's Falconetti's show all the way.