MEMOIR OF WAR screens Sunday Nov. 4th at 12pm at The Plaza Frontenac as part of this year’s St. Louis International Film Festival. Ticket info can be found HERE
Review by Stephen Tronicek
What happens to you when you must wait for a possibly dead loved one to return? By the end of the wait, will you still be the same person? Will they? Will your lives just start up again or will enough have changed in the time waited that it is impossible to reconcile the years past? These are the questions that Emmanuel Finkel’s Memoir of War grapples with, and not always in an entertaining way. At 2 hours Finkel’s work is an excruciating wait, a depressive wail, a drab slow walk to the finish…but it has to be. The everyday movement of the world around us, the everyday movement of ourselves is difficult, especially when we are in anticipation of an event that will give us back our joy.
Based off of Marguerite Dura’s “The War: A Memoir,” Memoir of a War often feels unmoored from the conventions of traditional storytelling. Marguerite (Melanie Thierry) must wait for her husband to return after he is taken by the Nazis, and as time goes on and on the wait wedges her further and further from other people. This means that characters can’t necessarily develop within the narrative traditionally. They exist, drifting in an out of Margurite’s life in a way that is not always narratively satisfying but perfectly captures the inner distance growing out of Marguerite’s grief.
Emmanuel Finkel’s direction may not be as precise as it needs to be, but it deceptively displays the depths Marguerite’s disparity. The camera often reflects this keeping the world blurry around Marguerite who we follow very closely as she deliberately makes it through her time alone. Thierry is also beyond excellent and spends much of the film alone with herself in the frame. That means we have to care about her for long periods of time of doing nothing. In the hands of a bad director and even a good actor, this can become a nightmare (just ask The Little Stranger from earlier this year), but Finkel and Thierry are more than up to the task. Both their work, along with the nontraditional structure of characters creates a weird ennui that however uncomfortable, is extremely potent.
Memoirs of War breaks the template of WWII biopics by not being uplifting but it benefits from being just that. As the story comes to a close, the audience isn’t sure whether or not the relationship at the center of the piece will survive but we know that it meant something, even if that something was unbearable grief and suffering.
Melanie Thierry gives a haunting performance in director Emmanuel Finkiel’s finely-crafted MEMOIR OF WAR. This powerful, beautifully-shot French-language drama is an adaptation of Marguerite Duras’ partly-autobiographical novel “The War: A Memoir” about her experiences in Paris in World War II.
In Nazi-occupied Paris 1944, Marguerite Duras and her husband Robert Antelme are members of the French Resistance when Robert is arrested by the Gestapo. Seeking answers about her husband’s fate, Marguerite (Melanie Thierry) goes to the local authorities, where French police are working with the Gestapo. In the waiting room, she is approached by a French collaborator, Rabier (Benoit Magimel), who offers to help her find out where her husband is being held. Sensing Rabier’s romantic interest, Marguerite begins a cat-and-mouse relationship in which she probes for information about her husband’s fate as the policeman probes for information about the Resistance.
The leader of Marguerite’s French Resistance cell, Morland (Gregoire Leprince-Ringuet), and other members of the cell back up her risky mission, but Marguerite’s main emotional support is her husband’s best friend Dionys (Benjamin Biolay), also a member of the Resistance cell. As the months of Robert’s absence drag on, the situation shifts from tense suspense and fear, to more a test of endurance, as Marguerite waits for news and begins to contemplate the unthinkable.
Marguerite Duras’s novel was groundbreaking, but the author also wrote the screenplay for the groundbreaking film HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR. Director Emmanuel Finkiel also has impressive post-war credentials, having been assistant director to three of the biggest cinematic names of the era: Bertrand Tavernier, Krzysztof Kieslowski and Jean-Luc Goddard.
Director Finkiel, who also adapted Duras’ novel for the screen, gets all the period details right and events unfold through graceful, delicate photography by director of photography Alexis Kavyrchine. Despite the lovely images, this is an emotionally powerful drama filled with realism and hard truths.
Told with a light but sure hand, the director puts the focus on Thierry, allowing her performance to carry the narrative. The drama not only shows us the tensions of events unfolding in Marguerite’s life but takes us takes us inside her thoughts and inner life, through sometimes dream-like imagery and voice-over narration drawn from Duras’ own writing. The film opens with Duras re-discovering a forgotten diary she kept during the war, and periodically that contemporary Marguerite observes herself as she goes through her anguished ordeal of waiting, meaning there are two Marguerites, in different emotional states on screen at the same time.
Finkiel structures his film to take us out of usual expectations. Rather than beginning in a conventional way, the story begins with the author revisiting her memories through a forgotten diary, flashing back to 1945, then further back to 1944. But her recollections in 1944 begin not with the couple’s work in the Resistance, but after her husband has already been arrested. It is all about her experience, the search for information, the waiting and not knowing, and her anguish in that.
Despite the many films about WWII, few if any focus on the experience of women in wartime, often presenting them only as background characters. MEMOIR OF WAR focuses directly on one woman’s wartime experiences, giving a fresh and rarely seen viewpoint on a frequently-covered slice of history. This is Marguerite’s personal journey but the search for information and the prolonged waiting extends the story beyond the personal story, to become a tale of all who wait for the return of loved ones in wartime and its aftermath. In some respects, it is particularly the experience of women in WWII, waiting for the return of men who left to fight or at least news of them, but also it is the experience of women with war throughout time.
Melanie Thierry is superb in this role, one that seems sure to capture critical and international attention. Thierry is masterful, with the play of complex emotion across her pale, expressive face ranging from a steely stoicism to fear to despair to cynicism. She is by turns vulnerable and powerful, crumbling and relentless. At times, we see both the present and remembered Marguerite in the same shot, with the woman who is remembering coolly observing the earlier self in the midst of the experience. Thierry shifts from emotion to emotion rapidly but believably in some scenes, such as when she is meeting with Rabier in a cafe on the eve of the Allied invasion, and moves from fear to hope.
The strong cast also includes Patrick Lizana as Resistance member Beauchamp and Emmanuel Bourdieu as Robert Antelme. Especially good is Benoit Magimel as Rabier the collaborator, who hopes to extract information about the Resistance from his meetings with Marguerite, But Rabier is also drawn to her in part because she is an author and an intellectual, someone usually outside his social reach. Early on, he tells her he is honored to be in the presence of a writer, “even a woman writer” and then tells her of his ambition to open a bookstore, a social climbing aspect to his collaboration with the Nazis. As Dionys, Benjamin Biolay strikes the right balance between being supportive and trying to keep Marguerite grounded in reality with blunt honesty in her darkest moments.
Two women characters are particular striking, illustrating aspects of the women who wait. One is a young mother Mrs. Bordes (Anne-Lise Heimburger), so despondent that her husband has not returned that she takes to her bed, leaving her children to fend for themselves. A larger, more emotionally-moving role is that of Mrs. Katz, played with heartbreaking sincerity by Shulamit Adar, a Jewish woman from Lyon who comes to stay with Marguerite as she waits for the return of her daughter. The daughter has a bad leg from polio but in contrast to Marguerite’s emotional roller coaster, Mrs. Katz is ever hopeful, despite rumors about how the Nazis treat the disabled.
MEMOIR OF WAR is a film that excels on all levels. This is a powerful film, for its tense wartime emotions and exploration of inner life but also for its unusual exploration of the overlooked experience of women in wartime, a viewpoint rarely seen on screen despite the many films about WWII. This is a drama worth seeing for everyone, and one to remember come awards season.
I loved Terry Gilliam’s BRAZIL when it first came out 30 years ago, but tried watching it again and didn’t feel it aged well at all. To me, the film now seemed bloated and unnecessarily complex, pushing self-indulgence to the limit. Gilliam’s newest film THE ZERO THEOREM is the Gilliam film most akin to BRAZIL, another surreal comic take on Orwell’s 1984 focusing on a bureaucrat in a retro-future world. While Gilliam’s troubles with studio interference regarding BRAZIL are the stuff of legend (and even the subject of a book), it at least received a wide theatrical release. THE ZERO THEOREM had a spotty release, screening in St. Louis just two nights at Webster University, but it makes its way to DVD and Blu-ray from Well Go USA on January 20th.
Explaining the plot of THE ZERO THEOREM is kind of pointless. Something about a computer hacker whose goal is to discover the reason for human existence but who continually finds his work interrupted thanks to “The Management” who send a teenager and lusty love interest to distract him. Most of THE ZERO THEOREM is carried by Christoph Waltz in the lead, with support from veteran David Thewlis, lovely Mélanie Thierry and young Lucas Hedges. Gilliam replaced the gray government of BRAZIL with the bright and colorful corporation, but kept the same feeling of hopelessness, lack of meaning and control that was prevalent in the earlier film. But, like BRAZIL, many of the concepts are either too abstract to “get” or too blunt (like the Church of Batman the Redeemer). Waltz does a fantastic job in his role, and the movie looks great for the tiny budget that was used. THE ZERO THEOREM is a film designed to make you feel and think, which it does, but I am afraid that’s it’s also an easy one to forget.
We Are Movie Geeks got a sneak peak at the upcoming THE ZERO THEOREM Blu-ray:
THE ZERO THEOREM was shot digitally and the quality of the 1080p Blu-ray transfer with its 1.85:1 aspect ratio lives up to what one would hope for. There are a lot of neon-bright colors used in the movie, and I’m happy to report that they all look great in HD, without ever becoming over-saturated. Black levels are also very strong, which is good news since many of the scenes take place in dark locales and fleshtones are properly rendered throughout.
The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track is outstanding. Dialogue is clear, intelligible and carefully prioritized, and dynamics are excellent.
Extras are a behind the scenes featurette that shows viewers the making of the film and mini-docs on ‘The Visual Effects’, ‘The Costumes’, and ‘The Sets’ – none of these featurettes go into much depth.
Despite my problems with THE ZERO THEOREM, I do recommend that fans of Terry Gilliam buy Well Go USA‘s Blu of his latest opus.
It’s director Terry Gilliam’s first film since THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS in 2009, and that one was barely released. His newest, THE ZERO THEOREM, looks like vintage Gilliam with its eye-popping design and strange humor. Will Gilliam’s tale of a computer programmer in a dystopian futureworld city be his first hit since 12 MONKEYS? That remains to be seen and while he didn’t cast any of his fellow Monty Python alums this time, any movie featuring Christoph Waltz, Matt Damon, and Tilda Swinton certainly has potential.
Check out the new trailer for THE ZERO THEOREM:
Synopsis:
Acclaimed director Terry Gilliam (Brazil, 12 Monkeys, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) returns with the visually stunning sci-fi epic The Zero Theorem, starring Academy Award winner Christoph Waltz as Qohen, an eccentric and reclusive computer genius. Living in isolation, Qohen is obsessively working on a mysterious project personally delegated to him by Management (Matt Damon) aimed at discovering the meaning of life – or the complete lack of one—once and for all. Increasingly disturbed by visits from people he doesn’t fully trust, including the flirtatious Bainsley (Mélanie Thierry), his unpredictable supervisor Job (David Thewlis), and would-be digital therapist Dr. Shrink-Rom (Tilda Swinton), it’s only when he experiences the power of love and desire that he’s able to understand his own reason for being.
