Capitão Conan

This is in many ways a very good war film but not in the typical way. The film opens in the closing days of WW1 on the Eastern Front where Capitaine Conan (Philippe Torreton in a Cesar winning performance) leads a band of ruthless hand to hand fighters, equivalent to a modern special forces unit. They prove themselves far more effective than the regular army in the final defeat and are envied by many including a friend of Conan, Lt Norbet (Samuel Le Bihan, IIRC was nominated for a Cesar in this). But when the armistice is signed Conan and his men find themselves in limbo while Norbert, working for the Court Martials finds himself accusing the very men he admired for robbery and murder. This film does take a while to get going but it is worth it, giving time for the characters to develop and also establishing the monotony the soldiers find, going from combat to walking the streets of Bucharest. The film also deals with the beginnings of the Russian Civil War and the problem of soldiers fighting with no motivation. Tavernier's direction is superb and visually the film equals a number of classic war films while the performances help to give it an edge as it goes into territory that Hollywood war film's in particular have tended not to go into.

Tavernier is probably the greatest film artist working in the world today. With Capitaine Conan, he accomplished what all the New-Wave directors dreamed about but never quite got the chance to do (except maybe for Bertolucci on The Last Emperor, if you want to consider him part of the original new-wave): to make a high-budget film with thousands of extras and elaborate, detailed sets which completely conforms to their vision and stays uncompromised, an auteurist epic. Well, how's this for uncompromised: Most of the shots in this film are made using only available light or the light that would be available given the circumstances of the scene! As a result, the film looks uniquely dark and authentic, as if it was shot in 1918 when the events took place. This takes some getting used to, and of course, people conditioned to being spoon fed every scene lit up like a christmas tree will be disoriented, but the shadowy effects achieved far outweigh the negatives. Some of the shots are kept in total darkness (as they would be in real life) with barely a face showing to indicate who's talking to who! Then the people gradually come out of the darkness into different shades of light, each more nuanced than the other. The cinematography and art direction are breathtaking; there isn't a single shot in the entire film that couldn't be called a masterpiece of its own, perfectly framed, perfectly composed and perfectly moved. Tavernier rarely uses a shot-reverse-shot preferring complex camera movement or long uninterrupted takes capturing the scenes from different angles without a cut. The scenes themselves, however, don't drag on forever, they are compact and to the point, making a Tavernier film usually one where a lot of things happen very fast and in order to pick up all the details and nuances, many viewings are essential. The acting from the awesome leads of Thoreton (a richly deserved Cesar award for best actor), Le Bihan, and Le Coque, down to the smallest bit player is uniformly brilliant. No American film I've ever seen has acting on this high a naturalistic level.

The film is mainly about the thin and precariously balanced area called 'amorality' that some people have a knack for staying within, racking up only enough whites (good deeds) and blacks (bad deeds)to stay mostly in the perfectly shaded middle gray. In a war-time situation the people who have this knack tend to do very well for themselves. Conan, a tough special forces officer whose group makes sneak attacks on the enemy and kills at knife-point, is that perfect 'amoral' character or for lack of a better term people have come to call an 'anti-hero', i.e., that guy who sometimes does 'bad' or 'evil' things, but integrates this within a higher integrity that's essentialy 'good' and admirable. His friend, Lt. Norbert is the more traditionally 'moral' man who comes to admire the guts it takes for Conan to operate rather openly in that precarious zone against all the hypocrisies of his superiors (which keep them protected). When Conan comes to defend a few of his men who have clearly gone over the line and committed atrocities which must be punished, Norbert, given the job of prosecuting the men, makes his position clear and breaks with him. All through the film he tries to become more like Conan and yet stays wary of the line that Conan could easily cross into madness and fanaticism. What draws Conan and Norbert together is their common integrity against the hypocrisies of society, as opposed to Lt. DeSceve, the other main character, who's an honorable soldier and strong man, but who kisses-up to the top brass and has a fascist attitude.

This film never got the distribution it should have in the U.S. simply because it was a subtitled foreign film and Americans have practically stopped watching foreign films! What a damn shame! They missed the greatest film of the '90s! I would conjecture that not 1 out of a 100 people who've seen Spielberg's melodramatic "Saving Private Ryan" have even heard of "Capitaine Conan." Catch it on the Sundance channel on cable or rent it on video and experience a true masterpiece. Then watch it again and again and experience deja-vu.

A great World War I film, arguably better than Kubrick's "Paths of Glory" and far superior to Mendes's "1917." More significantly, it is one of the best anti-war films as well for viewers who can dispassionately perceive it as such in the league of Malick's "The Thin Red Line." What surprises me no end is why critics rarely discuss this work with fine direction, scriptwriting and performances. To get a heroic soldier to aid a comrade who is a pacifist and not inclined to kill the enemy is described by this line in the script "Ask a dog to adapt to salad." The film applauds the heroics of the soldiers who win a war and at the same time chastises the bad deeds of the heroes. It also discusses the plight of soldiers who do not like to actively participate in the war and the decisions of top generals who are out of touch with ground reality. The following actors were a treat to watch: Samuel Le Bihan as Lt Norbet, Philippe Torreton as Captain Conan, and Catherine Rich as a well-bred lady with social connections, whose son is a soldier awarded capital punishment for being scared and for running away from battle lines. The fascinating tale is based on a novel by Roger Vercel. Tavernier was a director who could direct varied types of tales and make them well. What a talent!

One of the assistant directors to Tavernier was the Romanian director Cristian Mungiu who later won major awards at Cannes for his films: "4 Months, 3 weeks and 2 days," "Beyond the Hills" and "Graduation."

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.

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.