Les confins du monde

Deeply immersed in and committed to the sensibility of one ambivalent and alienated young man. Some will find it false to history, but the story is one man's story and if he is racist, imperialist and misogynist that is both true to the period and to this man in it. There is no attempt to elicit sympathy for him, only comprehension. Incidentally beautiful to look at.

The horror of man's inhumanity to man is unflinchingly portrayed here. Nothing gratuitous, nothing sensationalist, just horrible. But we get to see the good man is capable of too - just. Nothing spelled out. No obvious lecturing. A film for adults and as far away from a Clint Eastwood-type treatment of the subject as you could imagine.

Despite all modern expectations about pacifism, we are a long way from finding peace. Frankly, social well-being, equality, freedom or substitute environmentalisms as one cause to hold do not answer to our real anxieties and desires. We suffer badly for our external and internal wars, while we reproduce: the life and wars. The sensation of our Apocalypse Now remains ... Depardieu final scene:

• Yes, Europeans always find a way to not ask for forgiveness through charity.

This type of film has been done dozens of times before and they always fail at their anti-war message. In a perfect world, wars would be unnecessary but a student of history knows they are sometimes unavoidable and even necessary to live in a free world. The better war films focus on the heroic sacrifices good men make so others can be free. Anti-war films such as this instead like to dwell in the gutter of the inhumanity of war most of us would like to avoid.

To the Ends of the World goes from bizarre surrealism to brutal depravity and then to explicit pornography for no real reason. Some decent cinematography is ruined with disjointed musical scores that makes you think you are watching some bad arthouse film. The pacing is slow and the characters are not interesting. There is no real ending either. You just question what the hell did I just watch?

There really is no point to this weird movie except to try and tell a pretentious allegory of war that we already know and have heard many times before.

I am not that surprised by this new Guillaume Nicloux's feature. It's in the pure line of APOCALYPSE NOW or THIN RED LINE, or James Joyce or Joseph Conrad's novel. The tale of a man in search of an impossible task, search of himself, taking the pretext to avenge the murder of his brother. But not for wide audiences. All characters are fascinating, and the performances awesome. Especially Gérard Depardieu.