La peste

I'm just going to cut to the chase...a film based on a story written by Albert Camus is going to be far from a crowd pleaser! After all, his absurdist/existentialist works are not enjoyable for the average person. I've never read "The Plague" but have read other novels like "The Stranger" and I did not enjoy them. They are books that college professors enjoy assigning to their poor students but are not the types of stories most folks would choose to read. So, even if "La Peste" is well made (which it isn't), it would not be a film I could like.

The story is set in Oran, Algeria. The city has been closed off by soldiers and no one is allowed to leave until the plague has run its course. The story centers on folks such as a ridiculously cast American (William Hurt) who plays a French doctor, some reporters and some plague victims.

I found the story very detached considering the subject matter...which isn't surprising for Camus. I also thought the sound quality and story were both choppy. All in all, I wish I'd just watched something else as plague stories by absurdist/existentialist authors are pretty awful when it comes to entertainment!

imperfect only because mr. hurt takes his traum-welt sleepwalking characterization too far, and mr. puenzo drops the emotional anvil one time too many, this is nevertheless the most artistic political commentary i have seen. i compare it to CLOSETLAND. camus set the novel in his home of algiers, and mr. puenzo reprises with the buenos aires location that is his home. like post-war camus, mr. puenzo has much to say about his country's recently fallen dictatorship. camus would certainly have approved. the timing, in the face of the literal plague of aids, adds to the momentousness of this film.

sandrine bonnaire, robert duvall, and jean-marc barr are essential to the movie, and the sheer pulchritude of buenos aires shows, even though the city is cast as hapless, plague-stricken oran. it is the tragedy of argentina that makes it a perfect oran. and it is the beauty of its capital federal that makes it a perfect setting for camus' triumph of humanity over inhumanity.

the movie is complex, with explicit visual reference to the holocaust, and even a fair treatment of the complicity of the medical doctor (whose responsibility? remember, camus was above all an existentialist author). but the movie is not about a public health disaster, or oran, or the insanity and subsequent tragedy of civil resignation in germany's 1930's. oran could be anywhere at any time, and mr. puenzo has understood camus well on this point.

People seem awfully hard on this movie, and I don't quite understand why.

It must suffer in comparison with the book. Granted no filmmaker could possibly match Camus brilliance, but this is a pretty solid movie. One thing that disappointed me was the descision to remove the story from the time period. The time setting is integral to the allegory. All in all, though, a good reconstruction.

A fine example of the whole being less than the sum of its parts, this film might be more favorably received if we had been given more hints of its surreality. I certainly enjoyed it as a portrait of a city under stress; its residents not thinking clearly about what was really happening. Certainly I shared their struggle. And who knows, any of our cities may someday suffer as Oran did.

"La Peste" (The Plague), the film adaptation of the 1947 novel by French existentialist Albert Camus, received poor reviews and was a box office bomb and rightfully so-- except for the presence of French actress (speaking in English) Sandrine Bonnaire, as TV journalist Martine Rambert (in the novel, the character is a male newspaper journalist) Her conversation with Wm.Hurt (as Dr. Riseux), in the doctor's office, must go down as one of the most superb scenes in film history: "Do you have memories? None of us has memories. or hopes. And love needs both, doesn't it?" Sandrine Bonnaire (Vagabond, Monsieuer Hire, Joan the Maiden, La Ceremonie) answers Camus' (and everyone confronted with despair) philosophical questions from a Female point of view. Yet, as in Sandrine Bonnaire's best works,she is a woman alone in a hostile male environment. La Peste is an "etalage" or showcase for the depth, range and beauty of one of film's greatest actresses: Sandrine Bonnaire.