L'aveu

I saw it as a Eastern viewer, knowing , directly, few crumbs of the last decade of Ceausescu regime. I saw it, too, as History teacher. And as one of familiars with the universe of Costa Gavras cinematographic work. It is a pure masterpiece , first for the high dose of truth. Second, for acting. Not the last, for the final part . In essence a try of exorcism. Brutal, honest, precise. Maybe useful.

Came across this excellent film tonight on the Turner Classic Movie channel. I won't rehash the film story here, it has been explained quite well by previous reviewers.

Want only to state that I first saw it when it was released back in 1970-71. I was a very young soldier then. The Vietnam war was still raging and the cold war with the Soviets and Warsaw Pact nations was very real. The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 was still fresh in our minds.

Even though it is not entirely an anti-communist film, rather an honest look of what can and did go horribly wrong in soviet bloc countries, it was a chilling reminder to us of how frightening life could be in a totalitarian state.

Released here in the U.S. during a time of continued civil unrest and anti-war sentiment carried over from the late '60's, it was sort of a reality check to the growing affection for the left wing, socialist philosophy etc. among the younger generation.

Anton Ludvik aka Gerard (Yves Montand) is the vice-minister of Foreign Affairs of Czechoslovakia. He is worried that he's being followed. Other officials are being picked up in a purge. He gets picked up by a dark militaristic organization. His family is harassed. His wife Londonova (Simone Signoret) struggles in her new circumstances. He is psychologically tortured to give false confessions.

This is basically two hours of movie confinement with his jailers doing all kinds of psychological warfare. At times, I feel like being tortured myself. There's good and bad in that. It doesn't make for a pleasant or necessarily a compelling viewing experience. It's more of a compelling academic exercise. This is the cinematic equivalent of stress position. The acting is impeccable and the production is first rate. It's Kafkaesque and a cry against totalitarianism.

I saw this film last night and it has being going around in my head all day. It builds with a slow intensity which becomes absolutely compulsive. In style it reminded me a lot of The Godfather films. Calm, matter of fact but intensively observed portrayals of almost unbelievably hideous events. It has the same effect - if you stop to watch for just a few seconds, you are irresistibly drawn into the stream of events. Yves Montand is at his down beat best. What struck me most is that this true story of the post-way purges in the USSR's East European client states is of a time and place almost inconceivable to most of us now. The blind belief in The Party, the Inquisition-like mind games of the interrogators that convince the accused that to demonstrate their true loyalty to the Party, they must confess to the most ridiculous accusations of their betrayal of it. And I was surprised to see that it was made in 1971, the feel is absolutely contemporary, even though it depicts such far off events. While I was watching, I was convinced that I knew the story - isn't this the same as Koestler's 'Darkness at Noon'?

In "L'Aveau" Costa-Gavras breaks at once and for all in defending one political ideology and attacking the other, like he did in "Z". This time he goes to show that both sides have their problematic aspects, they all make severe mistakes, we can't know which was good and which was bad. The bottom of line is that both with capitalism and communism someone decent always had to pay the prize for trying to do the right thing.

Yves Montand plays the victim once again (murdered in "Z" and arrested by militants in "Etat de Siege" closing the combative Gavras political trilogy, "Missing" goes as an addendum, made years later after those films), a Czech and Communist vice-minister who'll be arrested and suffer on the hands of other members of the party who consider him a traitor of their cause. They believe he was a spy who had connections with American officials and all they want is a full confession of his crimes, which never existed, never happened (and they know that!), using of mental and physical methods to achieve results with the prisoner. The confession extraction is the real purpose to be visualized in here, exploited in painful and realistic details, methods used by the Communist - I recalled some of the descriptions made by Soljenitsin in "Gulag Archipelag", released on the same year as "L'Aveau" - like privation of sleep, keep marching at all times inside of the cell, and many other horrible techniques they used on prisoners during months and years if possible in order to break their resistance and confess everything, real or not.

We have to give plenty of credit to Montand during those scenes, which are not few. Definitely not an easy shooting to make, you feel his exhaustion, weakening each frame goes by, the visible weight-loss, he went to extremes very few actors can reach and no, this isn't much method acting, one does not go in training method for those scenes, he just put himself there at each sequence. It doesn't go well for the character and it sure does not go well with the audience. It's hard to watch since the brutality and the frequency everything happens is so repetitive as if Gavras was trying to make the people in the audience to break out from the movie when in fact he's just being real with the events, causing some stir in us to the point where we ask ourselves how come this guy is not guilty of treason.

In this manifest against the totalitarianism, the writer and director seemed to not making of the Socialists the almost heroes they were in "Z", while investigating the assassination of the popular leader. Their destructive paranoia, the unsubstantial suspicion they had with their own members, it's all a smoke curtain to hide the flaws of bigger people working on the Party and to hide the failures of a deeply flawed and inconsistent regime.

Authentic, honorable and well-acted in all possible ways, just not much easy to endure. But truthful, powerful, haunting and rewarding nonetheless. 9/10