Capitan Conan

Conan and his men call their own shots on the battlefield and create fear within the enemy with their surprise attacks. By 1918, the mother of all wars comes to an end on the Bulgarian border. By this stage the men have had the taste of blood and cannot seem to settle down. When they are transferred to Romania for a bit of rest and recreation, a new battle commences with each other. The rules of combat have altered for the sake of peace and hypocrisy runs rampart to the disgust of Conan. At times, the style falls into dark humour territory, producing bizarre moments on the battlefield and words of wisdom on the human condition at war.

This movie left me severely impressed. Most war films, particularly those intended to be viewed as a deep form of art tend to be much more shallow (Perhaps it has something to do with a lack of first hand military experience among film makers in the US.) Often the writers and directors are simply trying to support an anti war thesis by illustrating suffering, injustice and cruelty. But anyone can illustrate suffering, injustice and cruelty in a generic way and then squeeze it into an ill fitting war context. What impressed me about Bertrand's work is that he didn't do this. There were no shallow caricatures and he did not spoon feed the audience with anti war propaganda. Bertrand instead, tried to paint an accurate picture of some very complicated events and circumstances, and the equally complicated people who are trying to deal with them. The suffering, injustice and cruelty are there, but the audience must find these elements for themselves.

This film is about how the military experience can transform a person, and no, it's not about the army making men out of boys.

Conan leads a group of trench cleaners, who, in reality, were thugs and pathological killers who enjoyed butchering their enemies after infiltrating their lines at night.

Problems emerge when the war is over, but some of these men cannot deal with their wartime homicidal pathologies and keep doing what they were trained for and mount a heist which results in killings.

Conan then has to choose between his camaraderie for his men and his responsibilities as an army officer.

This film has many originalities, especially in its war scenes and, I must admit, the whole thing is entertaining.

It's lengthy at times, but Torreton gives a great performance and really deserved the Cesar for best leading role that he got that year.

It is, in my knowledge, the only film which treats of that very particular post-World War I episode, when the "Reds" tried to invade Bulgaria and the French came to stop the expansion of what was not yet know as the Soviet block.

This is a film which is worth viewing several times, for - like in a good novel - interesting details appear at each new viewing. By the way, the eponymous novel by Roger Vercel is excellent! This is my fourth viewing and this time I have been fascinated by the story of Jean Erlane (played by Pierre Val), the son of a good family with a Naval officer father and an Aviation pilot brother who both died fighting for France. Jean, who himself volunteered to join the Army, proved in action to be an irrepressible coward - to the point of being condemned to death by a Court Martial for desertion and transmittal of secrets to the enemy. The delicate matter of cowardice as a medical condition is approached, but obliquely. The reconstitution of the fateful night when Jean Erlane went to the Bulgarian lines, made on-site by the three men implicated in his trial - Samuel Le Bihan (as Lt Norbert, his prosecutor), Claude Brosset (as Father Dubreuil, his defensor), and Philippe Torreton (as Capt. Conan, the combat expert and witness of the night's events) -, is a magnificent moment of cinema. The whole movie is an excellent depiction of Army life during a war, with its glorious moments, its awful massacres, its long periods of tedium in far away places, its comical episodes and its instances where troops become unruly, at times up to the point of utter banditry. The main actors are all very good in their roles as officers, belonging to a generation where all male Frenchmen were familiar with things military, having undergone compulsory service (and for some of them the war in Algeria); but maybe Claude Rich (as Gen. Pitard de Lauzier), somewhat overplays his part of an inept and exasperating General! The filming of Bertrand Tavernier is very realistic and one gets gripped by the story, so that the two hours pass like a breeze. ___ .

Historically speaking, this is a very interesting film, as very few films have dealt with what occurred between the Armistace in November 1918 and when the troops were ultimately brought home--some as late as 1920 or 1921. During this period, an undeclared and practically forgotten war raged off and on between soldiers from several nations and the Red Army along the Russian borders. Apparently, France, the United States, Germany and several other nations were worried that the Russian Revolution might spill into other nations and so troops were sent to eastern Europe. Not a whole lot was gained from this, though it did help to keep some of the problems from spreading somewhat. The problem is that while I am familiar about this period, I wonder just how many non-history teachers know about this. While the film does give us some information about this, it's a shame it wasn't more clear and exactly why the troops were sent into Bulgaria and Romania and who they were fighting wasn't really discussed. Perhaps the writers and director wanted this confusion in the film in order to mirror the confusion of the troops, as they seemed to have no idea why they were there either--but still, more information would have been nice.

Despite the setting for the film being this undeclared war, the theme running through the film was the extreme difficulty some soldiers had adjusting to peace. Captain Conan and his group of irregulars were savage guerrilla fighters and could not adapt to a post-WWI world. This all came to a head when some of Conan's men were accused of committing crimes against the Romanians as well as when Conan was drug into resulting trials for these accused soldiers as well as a deserter. This is where the film became more interesting and I started to enjoy the film after a very slow start. Once again, the film was important because rarely is this transition to "normalcy" addressed in war films.

So do I recommend the film? Well, it really depends on your tolerance for a slow film (in the beginning) as well as your ability to follow the script--after all, if you don't have at least a basic knowledge of this period, you might feel a bit lost.