La vie et rien d'autre

A wonderfully acted and well written drama set in France in the aftermath of World War One. It's a romance about the importance of memory in morality and love and coming to terms with loss on an individual and national scale.

I watched La vie et rien d'autre, about a year ago. Well, it stuck with me. And I really wanted to see it again. So I watched it a second time. And some things became clearer to me. The central message obviously that war sucks, that war is a disaster for everybody. And nothing should be done to hide this truth from anybody. That's Delaplane's belief, that's his fight, his moral code. And yes, there is a love story coming to interfere with his dull and depressing duty. Why people can't see that a man such as Delaplane could not handle love, specially while in the middle of such an ugly struggle? I read some negative comments about this film. I just could not understand that. This is a beautiful movie, touching, a bit slow certainly, but the topic does require that we take time to learn all the details so as to better understand the nature of this human drama. What pushes all these people to look for remnants of their loved ones, just to have proof of their death. For what? This we may never understand for not having to live through this. Go ahead, watch this movie. It's not a big action movie, no, it's a reflection movie. A movie that a lot of people who see war as something that's glamorous should have seen, but probably never will... alas!

This is a fascinating film that tells a story that is unsuspected nowadays: the census of the dead of the 1914-1918 war, the number, the identity of the dead, and as a subplot, the search for the body of what will become the unknown soldier of the Arc De Triomphe. And more generally, the film shows us elements of the immediate aftermath of the war that look very much like the state of war. Something that we are not used to see anymore.

The whole is told from the point of view of three characters: Philippe Noiret, the commander in charge of the census; Sabine Azéma, a rich bourgeois woman who is looking for her missing husband, and Pascale Vignal, a schoolteacher and waitress, who is also looking for her fiancé. Their stories will eventually come together.

We can trust Bertrand Tavernier for the quality of the reconstruction and the atmosphere of this post-war period, not at all brilliant. But the film is exciting, moving and strong, from small elements and small touches, not spectacular, but which produce a whole with a lot of emotions.

When I saw this movie at the Montreal Film Festival, I was impressed by this contemplative movie. Like any contemplation, it sees everything about human nature and subtly refers to it. No flash, no gadgets, no lectures, just the plain vision of things as they are. He just lets you to be the judge of things. Then, I became a great fan of Tavernier's movies. This movie occupied my mind for ever after and never left me. This movie also confirmed how useless and dreadful this war was, and maybe how ridiculous most wars are. Perhaps my favourite movie ever. Anyway, a must see.

This movie has a sequel called Captain Conan which also shows Tavernier's prowess in making art and intelligent cinema where a lot of characters are involved and seem so natural.

Yes, it's a beautiful film, and Noiret is terrific. But the whole plot is something of a whitewash. The Hollywood romance between two posh people (with all their limbs and apparent sanity) is pretty hard to take.

After the Armistice there were racketeers making masses of money out of the identification and reburial of the dead. The cut-price, short coffin racket was the most notorious. (A contractor offered a cheap bulk price for coffins, which were too short, so that many corpses had to be chopped so that they could fit in.) Then there were the war-memorial rackets. Is there a single beautiful WW1 war memorial ?

A far better film is 'Au revoir là-haut' (See you up there), which, though inevitably not as good as the devastating book, gets down into the corruption that accompanies all wars, invasions, occupations and their aftermaths. This film could have been very good if it had been shot in black and white and been half the length.