sandyg@tekchips.LABS.TEK.COM (Sandy Grossmann) (12/26/90)
LIFE AND NOTHING BUT
A film review by Sandy Grossmann
Copyright 1990 Sandy Grossmann
Director: Bertrand Tavernier
Cast: Philippe Noiret, Sabine Azema, Pascal Vignal
Screenplay: Jean Cosmos and Bertrand Tavernier
Synopsis: A unique film about resiliency and resolve, set in post-WWI
France in 1920. Philippe Noiret (the lead actor) won a
Cesar, the French equivalent of the Oscar, for his work in
this movie. The story is unusual and the characters
well-developed, but it's unlikely to command a large
audience, so see it before it disappears altogether. In
French, with subtitles.
Major Dellaplane (Philippe Noiret) is the director of the War
Casualties Information Bureau. One of his official responsibilities is
to match corpses, amnesiacs, and worldly effects with the 350,000
reports of soldiers missing in action (MIA). The other official but
secret responsibility is to find a very dead, very unrecognizable, but
very French unknown soldier to go under the Arc de Triumphe in Paris.
You might say he doesn't see his job in the same light as his
superiors. Methodically, Dellaplane leads the effort of counting
corpses, photographing faces, interviewing family members, and
collecting identifying information about each missing soldier. He
ignores the request for an unknown soldier for as long as possible.
The idea of giving up on identifying any corpse is morally
repugnant to Dellaplane. He does what any unwilling bureaucrat would:
he stalls for time and impedes "progress". Impatiently, his superior
tells him to find a body already and stop sending the horrid body count
statistics. His superior wants unidentified corpses exhumed in hopes of
finding a suitable candidate. Dellaplane provides Oriental gravediggers
who will not touch the dead for religious reasons.
Most of France, it seems, is impatient to bury the 1,500,000 dead
along with all the remnants of war. Except, of course, for the
families of the 350,000 missing and for the new profiteers of war: the
war-memorial sculptors/artisans, the lumber suppliers, the cooks who
feed the remaining army, and the private investigators who--for a
fee--locate and bundle up the dead.
If this were an American movie, we'd see grim people in a grim
landscape. The camera would show us, for example, a close-up of a face
edged in tragedy then would shift focus and show us an artistically
arranged stack of decomposing bodies. But this isn't an American movie.
We see no corpses. Instead of iconic characters whose names might as
well be Heartbroken or Disillusioned, we meet villagers and soldiers who
simply and anonymously do their jobs of clearing debris and rebuilding
the village. They are pragmatic and unsentimental.
We meet two women: Irene (Sabine Azema), the Parisienne
daughter-in-law of a senator, and Alice (Pascal Vignal), a local
schoolteacher. Irene is looking for her MIA husband, and Alice is
looking for her MIA fiancee. Irene seems to be the imperious upperclass
type when we first meet her, while Alice seems the impressionable,
tenderhearted young thing.
Irene attempts to use her father-in-law's clout and her pointedly
superior social position to increase the amount of effort expended in
finding her husband. Major Dellaplane is not impressed. He tells Irene
that her husband will receive precisely 1/350,000th of his attention.
Also, she should harbor no romantic notions that her husband will
reappear and be all right, Dellaplane tells her curtly. Even if he is
alive, the very fact that he hasn't returned makes it a good thing that
he hasn't: he is either dead or might as well be dead.
Alice gets a similar lecture from the Major. Neither lecture has
the desired effect, though; both women are determined to find what
they're looking for. We begin to see that Irene and Alice share more
than a common goal. They share qualities called fortitude and loyalty
and perseverance. Much like Dellaplane himself.
We learn about Dellaplane gradually, the way we would in person.
He is an intriguing, complex man. An example to the men underneath him,
he is courageous in the face of danger, unquestionably willing to work
ceaselessly through a crisis, and completely committed to his cause. He
is a gentleman. He is also temperamental, abrupt, and boorish.
He has researched Irene's husband, but he doesn't share this
information with her until he can produce a definitive answer. During
the rest of the film, we watch their relationship change from mutual
hostility to mutual respect.
Dellaplane resists the effort to symbolize or glorify the colossal
loss of life. To him, such symbolism hides the loss. More important
to Dellaplane is to chronicle the deaths as completely as possible so
that the business of life can ensue. Every day, civilians gather
outside a mined tunnel, hoping to find clues that reveal whether their
sons died in there. They cannot go home without knowing. Neither can
France heal without this issue put to rest.
Yet the officials over Dellaplane glorify the dead instead of
laying them to rest. Villagers attempt to redraw their village
boundaries so they can show they had losses. The sculptors delight in
the 35,000 villages that each want a monument honoring their dead.
Soldiers stand to sing a patriotic song in a surge of national fervor.
The director offers a counterpoint: We see an aunt and uncle
enter the mined tunnel in order to identify and claim their nephew. A
young soldier accompanies them. When the makeshift casket is opened,
the aunt looks in and tilts her head. "He is so thin," she says. The
soldier faints; the uncle carries him out. Perhaps nowhere else in the
film is the personal reality of war so sharply drawn.
This is an understated piece, done by the same director as A
SUNDAY IN THE COUNTRY. Tavernier shows us both the consequences of
chauvinism and the resilience that allowed France to emerge with such
dignity. The warning and the hope, one could say.
--
Sandra J. Grossmann sandyg@sail.labs.tek.com