Flandres won the grand prize at Cannes, so somebody must have liked it. I didn't, much. The film takes a depressed, and depressing, look at the life of a French peasant, who becomes a soldier in a nameless war somewhere in the Mideast. At the beginning of the movie, we see him doing farm chores, wandering around the muddy barnyard with a pig (a heavy-handed metaphor Eisenstein would have loved), and having Hobbesian sex with his girlfriend (nasty, brutish and short, possibly the least erotic scene of consensual sex ever filmed.) Later he denies that they are a couple, so she takes revenge by immediately going off with another man. Good for her, and too bad she can't stay away from this brute.
Both of the heroine's lovers are drafted and sent to some faraway desert land where they join a small platoon. The men know nothing about the war, and seem to care less. They fight when they have to, and some of them, including our hero, rape a lone woman when they get the chance. The woman turns out to be a rebel officer, and when the men are captured she has one of them castrated and shot. He turns out not to be one of the men who raped her. No justice here, just chance and random cruelty --- we get the point.
Our hero eventually escapes, after leaving the girl's other lover, who is wounded, to be killed by the rebels. (Not that any heroism on his part would have helped, they would merely both have been killed.) He has been moved enough by his experience to mutter "I love you" as they have sex again. This time the sex is just as boorish, but the sun is shining and the girl has an air of resignation rather than frustration.
The film is well made in a minimalist sort of way, for which its director has been much praised. However, I felt that the points have been made before, and more effectively. I also thought I detected a whiff of condescension, the Paris intellectual looking down his fine long nose at the dirty peasants and their humdrum lives devoid of any real consciousness. I don't, personally, think that's fair.
Both of the heroine's lovers are drafted and sent to some faraway desert land where they join a small platoon. The men know nothing about the war, and seem to care less. They fight when they have to, and some of them, including our hero, rape a lone woman when they get the chance. The woman turns out to be a rebel officer, and when the men are captured she has one of them castrated and shot. He turns out not to be one of the men who raped her. No justice here, just chance and random cruelty --- we get the point.
Our hero eventually escapes, after leaving the girl's other lover, who is wounded, to be killed by the rebels. (Not that any heroism on his part would have helped, they would merely both have been killed.) He has been moved enough by his experience to mutter "I love you" as they have sex again. This time the sex is just as boorish, but the sun is shining and the girl has an air of resignation rather than frustration.
The film is well made in a minimalist sort of way, for which its director has been much praised. However, I felt that the points have been made before, and more effectively. I also thought I detected a whiff of condescension, the Paris intellectual looking down his fine long nose at the dirty peasants and their humdrum lives devoid of any real consciousness. I don't, personally, think that's fair.