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Comments: Captain Conan

This film has taken a while to get here, dating from 1996, when it won some Césars.

The namesake of the film, Captain Conan, is the leader of a group of guerrillas, or shock troops, whose chief weapons are their knives. Their favourite method of killing enemy soldiers is to slit their throat. This method is not only silent, but also serves to terrorise all who hear of it.

There were apparently 3000 such French warriors (as he calls himself), and he says it was them who won the first world war. All the other soldiers merely fought the war, they did not win it.

The film, like Saving Private Ryan which arrives shortly, kicks off with a long battle scene, in which we get to meet the men and their methods of operation. "Brutally efficient" is a good description.

After some scenes like this, Armastice is declared. This was supposed to be the official end of the war. However, back at the ranch, the war went on unofficially for a year longer, on the eastern front.

You need to put yourself in the position of the French soldiers, who had spent 4 years in the bloodiest and messiest war of their time, thousands of miles from home, dirty, fed terrible food, missing their families, and so on. Now they get told that instead of going home, they are going to carry on fighting...

At the same time, the brass is trying to maintain discipline, and so the film shifts focus to the Captain's pal, a literary student who is suddenly made first a defender then a prosecutor.

After two such trials, both involving the Captain to a degree, we are back to a war scene.

The acting in the film is very good, the film is well made, and the script has some quirky touches of humour in it when it takes the mickey out of life in a war.

What bothered me about the film - and is the reason for the relatively low rating for such a highly rated movie - was the overall structure of the film.

Our typical Hollywood movie (or TV episode) introduces the hero, gives him a problem to solve, which he does, overcoming tremendous obstacles along the way, at the climax, after which they all live happily ever after.

This storyline is different. We basically just follow the Captain through the period at the end of the war. I suppose you can consider it a character study. However, the way the focus shifts to his pal for half the film makes you wonder when something important is going to happen. Nothing does.

The film tries to examine to hyposcrisy of society, which trains men to be killers, and rewards them for butchering other men in the wrong colour clothes, and then expects them to return to civilian life and carry on as if they had not had those experiences.

The film also probes the selective application of justice, so prevalent in war time, and still prevalent in our own society - look at speed traps, or TV licences, for example.

The film felt longer than its 130 minutes, and I blame this on the unusual plot structure. We all sat waiting for the "trigger event" to set the storyline in motion, and this never happened.

Two things stood out - the beauty of the countryside on a summer day, contrasted with the same countryside in the midst of a bloody explosive battle; and the loyalty of a commander to his men.


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