Le bunker de la dernière rafale

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.