A Very Long Engagement
The French title translates literally (the only way I can translate, with an online program) as “A Long Sunday of Engagements.” I wonder if an idiomatic translation might be something like our expression “A month of Sundays”?
This is the second collaboration between director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, who is one of the most exciting guys working today, and Audrey Tautou, maybe my favorite actress. The first was Le Fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain (Amelie). I was more charmed by that movie than anything else I saw that year … hell, in many years, and it was partly his audacious directing technique and irresistible story and partly her amazing presence. This is much, much darker … and yet manages to be hilarious, challenging, and stunningly beautiful.
In World War I, after a few years at the front, many soldiers came to believe that it would be a lot better to get home alive, even if pieces of you were missing. To that end, they would sometimes blow off their own hands or feet. But in the French Army, that wasn’t a ticket home if they caught you at it. It was a death sentence. They would either execute you or send you out into no-man’s land and not let you back in the trenches.
(WWI was waged by generals who were total, criminally incompetent idiots, on both sides. If I’d been alive and had it in my power on November 12, 1918, I would have rounded up all the generals, every blithering degenerate man, lined them up against a wall and gut-shot them with a small-caliber weapon, with bullets smeared with dogshit. Then I would have hung around to watch them die, no matter how long it took. The longer, the better. Men like Lord Kitchener, Pershing, Ludendorff, Haig, Foch, Grand Duke Nikolai, Hindenberg, Tirpitz, von Spee, Petain, Castlenau, Manoury, Sarrail. Names that you should spit after you say them.)
AVLE begins with 5 of these poor schmucks, one of whom is actually innocent. They are sent out to die. Then we meet the fiancée of one of them, Mathilde, in 1920. She refuses to believe he is dead, and sets out to track him down. (This could be dangerous if he is alive, because he would then be sentenced to hard labor.) (The French Army apparently never discovered the concept of forgiveness. See Paths of Glory.)
No way I’m going to get into the plot. It is very complicated, and I’m not sure I understood every nuance of it. But I’ll gladly see it again, because with Jeunet, it’s the way the story is told as much as the story itself. There is omniscient narration, there are lovely process shots, every character is interesting, there is flashy camera work that enhances the story instead of distracting from it and, wonder of wonders, there are some wonderful special effects that are used for a real purpose. The battle scenes are quite gory, but I sure don’t know how to portray WWI without showing people getting blown up. Audrey is her wonderful self. Jodie Foster puts in a brief appearance, speaking French. I can find no faults with this movie.
The DVD has a “Making Of” that is one of the best I’ve ever seen. Instead of a lot of fatuous interviews, it shows you the real behind-the-scenes process, the nuts and bolts that are so fascinating. How did they get that shot? … Oh, I see. That is so cool! Jeunet does something he probably learned from Frank Capra, which is going around to each and every extra that will be walking through a scene and telling them what they are supposed to be doing. “You’re going to meet your lover. You just came from the bank where they turned down your loan. You two are planning your holiday this summer … no, this winter. You’re going skiing.” Believe it or not, this obsessive attention to detail is the difference between a movie that works and one that doesn’t.
I will probably be buying this DVD, and I hardly buy any these days.