Jean Moulin

maybe not the best. if you see it with high expectations. maybe, not seductive. because the story becomes too simple and the style of French films about the Resistance is so familiar than one of the first impressions could be - Jean Moulin deserves a better film about him. but , off course, it is a film for the soul not the historian. it is a homage and a short story about patriotism. and this is the only important thing in this case. because, more than a form of propaganda, it has the virtue to give to Charles Berling the chance to do a real beautiful role. and this, maybe, is the basic argument for see it.

at first sigh, it is not credible. the gestures, the actions are more drops on nationalist speech. but it is a special film. for heart , not for mind. it is a drawing. about things out of words. portrait of a French hero, it is, in fact, portrait of France. and this fact is essential for understand the force of it. the message is universal. for the countries under German occupation. for the lands under Soviet occupation. for the need of freedom who lives in many places. the courage, maybe a strange courage of people for who motherland is more important than life was reflected with delicate art in this film. and the performance of Charles Berling is seductive because it remains a smart puzzle of nuances.

Jean Moulin was one of the men responsible for the re-emergence of France as a world power after WWII, but he had to die to do it. This excellently researched film is not even mentioned in the Film Review books I own, but it is well worth seeking out for anyone interested in how a country that has capitulated to fascism begins to work itself out of the iron-glove of tyranny and the capitulation of its' cowards (i.e., the Vichy regime).

You will find out that the problems within the French Resistance led to Moulin's death, that there was as much dissent among the various resistance groups, as there was between the Vichy collaborationists and the French Resistors. And to think that Roosevelt recognized the Vichy Government, thereby aiding the deaths of GIs and our OSS folks within France makes me recoil in horror!!! If you're looking for the relationship between the French Resistance and the French Jews/Deportees, you won't find it here. Even though Moulin's girlfriend is Jewish, it really max nichts.

The suspense is horrible, because you know the outcome going in but what you don't know is 'Who'? There are so many potential betrayors that when you finally see the one who 'done it', and then read the credits and what happened to the survivors (who were also consultants on this movie), you wonder if you still got the truth.

Sometimes, as we know about Martin Luther King's assassination, the actual assassin was set up to perform the act by the atmosphere of hatred within the opposition's ranks. And in seeing the opportunists among some of the Resistors, you can't help but wonder. And the movie itself hints at that. Who indeed was essentially responsible for his death? As for the waterboarding, Moulin was tortured to death and this was but one of the many ways he was broken but the movie shows you in gory, suffocating detail just how this is done. The lines in this movie come from history, and DeGaulle is shown just as egotistical as he probably HAD to be in order to pull this nation of divided opinionated people together.

See and then go out and read 'Resistance and Betrayal', the biography of this brave martyr. There are lessons for us here in the U.S. to learn, as our nation spirals down toward fascism.