An average movie

To be honest, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but since it was directed by Jean-Luc Godard and since it was available on Netflix, I thought I might as well check it out. It was one of his earlier works but, back then, the guy was already taking his distance from traditional narrative filmmaking. Still, it was pretty cool to see the master of French New Wave delivering a war film and, well, it was pretty obvious that the guy was seriously anti-war. It’s interesting that, even though the scenes during which these two naïve farmers were recruited might seem ridiculous, I don’t think it was so far-fetched after all. Indeed, in France, I got lucky and the military conscription was cancelled just before I was supposed to be enrolled. Instead, you had to go to what they call the ‘Defence and Citizenship Day’ during which you basically spent the whole day watching some very boring videos about the French military forces. Well, at the end, they were some army recruiters who lured some young boys like me by talking about all the money they would make and the nice cars they could buy if they joined the French army and you wouldn’t believe the number of young boys who were actually attracted by this sales speech. Concerning the rest of the movie, to be honest, the scale was too small for me. Sure, Godard did try to add some war stock footage but it didn’t really fit the rest of the movie. Above all, with only a handful of characters involved, you never get the feeling that there was a major conflict going on. Still, all these texts randomly showing up were really spot on and the lovely Geneviève Galéa (who actually turned out to be Emmanuelle Béart’s mother) was some nice vintage version of Ana de Armas. Anyway, to conclude, even if it was pretty obscure, it was a decent watch and I think it is worth a look, especially if you are interested in Jean-Luc Godard’s work.