The Bunker of the Last Gunshots (1981) User Reviews

Too experimental

[Dockelektro · 6/10 · 23 July 2002]

Well, I can say I looked forward to it, but I must say that at the end it's only an exercise of style with no real appeal to grasp the viewer. The real interest in this short movie recognizing all the things that would make Jeunet & Caro movies so unique. But if you're looking for a better revision of the concept, check "La Cité des Enfants Perdus". Anyway, it has vision and that is a good thing.

An experimental Jeunot and Caro short

[Red-Barracuda · 6/10 · 21 January 2013]

In a post-apocalyptic world a group of soldiers live in a concrete bunker. As far as they know, they could be the last men on the planet. One day one of them finds a mysterious machine with a counter set to 99999. An accident triggers the device to start counting down towards zero. This leads to paranoia within the base and the men soon start killing one and other.

The Bunker of the Last Gunshots is basically a very early example of the work of directors Jean-Pierre Jeunot and Marc Caro. It shares some of the hallmarks of the two 90's films that brought them to prominence – Delicatessen and The City of the Lost Children. Like those two this one is set in a future world where something unspecified has gone wrong. It also shares the retro-futuristic décor and devices. It's consistently interesting visually, with considerable care taken with the set-design as well as the costumes. The colour palette is limited to mainly green monochrome, which gives off an appropriate gloomy atmosphere. The story isn't very easy to interpret seeing as it is told with no dialogue but the sound design otherwise is very inventive, with a variety of strange noises used throughout. As a result, this is a much more experimental piece that the 90's feature films Jeunot and Caro are most famous for. But it is an interesting bit of work and is sure to be of value especially to fans of these directors.

Like "Metropolis" on crack

[rooprect · 11 April 2005]

Visually intriguing, logically confounding. After viewing _Bunker_ twice, I've yet to make any sense of the plot. It seems to be a psychological commentary on the causes of madness, using an isolated military brigade as a subject group. Beyond that, your guess is as good as mine as to what's going on. Perhaps that is the intent--that we be dragged into this bizarre, nonsensical madhouse with no real grasp of stability. If so, mission accomplished.

The cinematic style is compelling. It's very Metropolis-esquire (haha IMDb's auto-spell-checker keeps changing E-S-Q-U-E to ESQUIRE... sorry folks) with Jeunet/Caro's own brand of macabre sarcasm thrown in. Fans of Jeunet/Caro will recognize certain raw images and a few sound effects that will reappear in _City of Lost Children_. Everyone else will probably be irritated and possibly incensed to violent madness themselves. They may throw mashed potatoes at you.

Note: there is no dialogue and no music. So you really need to work hard to keep up. If you make it through the entire film with some sense of understanding, please comment and let me know what the @#% is going on.

Robotic contents, robotic execution

[Horst_In_Translation · 4/10 · 2 September 2017]

"Le bunker de la dernière rafale" or "The Bunker of the Last Gunshots" is a French black-and-white short film from 1981, so this one is already over 35 years old. It was written by Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet, one of several collaborations between the two and both were in their 20s here and not even at half their current age. The film runs for 25 minutes roughly and if you are not as fluent in French as I am no problem as there is no spoken language in here. But it is also not a silent film as there are all kinds of sound effects from start to finish, usually very robotic-sounding, very metallic ones. It is a bit of a claustrophobic setting here, but sadly I must say none of the characters were truly memorable or managed to make a deep impact. I definitely like some of Jeunet's stuff, but this early effort does so little for me that 2 out of 5 stars is still on a fairly generous note. All in all, I give this one a thumbs-down and I don't recommend checking it out.

Not sure why this appears to be so confusing.

[biotech9 · 10/10 · 15 August 2009]

The plot of the short is as follows, a load of soldiers are in a bunker in some future apocalyptic wasteland. They undergo drills for some eventual conflict phase but apart from as a brief flurry of activity in the beginning of the movie it is revealed that they are all suffering from intense boredom. One soldier tortures insects to pass the time, and in chasing one particular beetle discovers a hitherto unknown machine, which has a timer set at 99999. The soldier informs his superiors, and the discovery is recorded up the ladder. Plans for the bunker are checked, and the floors are even ripped up to find where the machine is connected to.

Accidentally, the machine is activated, and it begins to count backwards from 99999 to 0, one digit per second. The soldier who activated it is draconically punished with a lobotomy. The other soldiers start to come to pieces under the strain of the countdown. As the machine counts closer and closer to 0, the soldiers turn on themselves.

Final Spoiler:

As the last seconds approach, the only surviving soldier (the unfortunate who was lobotomised) is left handcuffed to the machine. The digits count to 0... and then flip around to 99999 and stop.

The movie can be a little confusing at times, but it's wonderfully shot, and shows some seriously beautiful costume design and settings (if a little grey and depressing). Overall it's an interesting film to check out if you're into Jean-Pierre Jeunet, and who isn't?

Avant-Garde Cyberpunk

[BerzerkerX · 8/10 · 2 June 2011]

This is a short film and a ''Cyberpunk''-type of short movie. There's no dialog and the story is hard to follow, but it's probably meant to be like that. The viewer himself/herself must decide what's going on and what exactly they are doing and what something is. If you don't have any imagination, you won't like this. Some parts of the film look great and the sound effects create a great atmosphere. In the end it's a good avant-garde film.' If you learned about this movie from Wumpscut's album Bunkertor 7, you may be disappointed, the film isn't as creepy as you may think it is. It reminds me of Tetsuo: The iron man and Metropolis.

There is no one like Caro & Jeunet!

[RodrigAndrisan · 15 July 2017]

It's only a short film. And it has music, contrary to a commentator. A strange music, typical for this genre. It does not have a dialogue indeed, only now and then we hear a voice that communicates something in an unknown language. And no women! No woman, no cry! Only men, all the heads shaved. And all soldiers in uniform, of an unknown army. Waiting for something big to happen, there is a countdown... Many of them with gas masks on their face. They all manage how they can best inside a bunker. Extremely solidary one with each other. Example: one of them is helped to feed himself by another and then shot in the head by the same good comrade. Probably, as in a Jewish kibbutz, a Russian-Soviet sovkhoz or kolkhoz, or a German or Japanese concentration camp. Joking not joking, it made me think of "The Desert of the Tartars"(1976)Il deserto dei tartari (original title), Valerio Zurlini's film after Dino Buzzati's novel. And to Hitler's last days together with those close to him, in that bunker in Berlin. And to those Japanese soldiers who continued to fight on isolated islands, long after WW2 was over. Very well done, the films of Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet got something very special, a unique, somehow kafkian atmosphere, which captivates me. Great filmmakers!

Cold, bizarre, paranoid, but promising

[stonem · 5 January 2002]

I was hopeful when I saw this short film before a screening of "Delicatessen," but frankly it left me cold and confused. There are some creative costumes, sets and sounds, but in the end "The Bunker" is little more than an experiment in bleakness, like Lynch's "Eraserhead." There's very little dialogue, color, or narrative to follow, but fans of Jeunet and Caro will recognize some of the retro-futuristic devices and effects -- many are revisited in the far more polished and fun "City of Lost Children."

The Last Bunker

[chaos-rampant · 12 July 2009]

A compelling 25 minute short film about a group of soldiers locked inside a concrete bunker and the ensuing madness that follows from being locked there for an unspecified amount of time. They send distress signals to the outside world but there doesn't seem to by anyone left to reply. They might as well be the last survivors of some final war. There's a cold clinical almost mechanical look to the film which is tinted ghoulish green like a silent film and Jeunet displays not only a remarkable grasp of cinematic language, sustaining interest with an almost nonexistent storyline and no dialogues through an interesting shot selection, but also of style and atmosphere. The movie ultimately descends into chaos and with it loses that sense of foreboding mystery that makes the first half so good, but it's still a compelling watch.

A slightly different Jeunet...

[drunk_in_skopje · 14 November 2005]

This is a short film that is more proper to be seen after watching most of Jeunet's movies, because it brings out a darker and more bizarre side of the director's imagination. Anyway, the plot is about a number of soldiers waiting for something unknown, but certain things happen in the bunker where they are, and in some weird state of panic kill each other… you realize what is going on in the end when the digits show up, and understand the purpose(less) of their acts. The point of the film is not quickly reachable, but it is not that striking anyway. The primary beauty of this film lies in the way it was shot. All these details, color effects, sounds simulating psychical state and movements give a certain atmosphere of the dimension the film creates. I would even say that I got the idea that Aronofsky, in Pi, has stolen (in terms of technical appearance) much of what can be seen in "The Bunker of the Last Gunshots", especially the concepts with the bugs, machines, and sound effects. Oh yes, and the bold heads.