Louis Malle made a bunch of films in the 50’s and 60’s that I liked, so this was my first venture into the later stages of his career, and this is probably the film I’ve heard the most about without knowing who Louis Malle was, so I had a certain anticipation to watching this. But I don’t really know what to expect from a Malle film, like when I watched Zazie dans le metro (1960) and was blown away by how different it was to any previous film I had seen by him. In fact, it had more in common with those Warner Brothers cartoons than any of his films. Anyway, so Au Revoir les Enfants is probably his most famous film from what I gather, and it depicts what certain filmmakers really love to depict, the Second World War. However, this time around, the story is quite autobiographical, from Louis Malle’s childhood. It’s about his growing friendship with a Jewish boy who is hidden at his Catholic boarding school, and the ongoing presence and threat of the Germans.
And its good, it actually is. It isn’t as much about the Second World War as about growing up to adulthood and friendship. The film strengthens this by putting these familiar themes into an extreme situation. But most of the stuff that happens is like things we ourselves remember, like kids sneaking off to smoke, increasing interest in the opposite gender, hate-love relationships and so on. But the film depicts its so well, and we see easily that Malle is a really experienced director by now, his subtle touches with the camera are at times fantastic, the setting is well defined and we quickly grow familiar with it. The film does get a bit frustrating at times, as it stigmatises the characters and situations a bit. However, it doesn’t get too bad, and it’s still miles away from that atrocity Schindlre’s List. But it does seem as its impossible for filmmakers to make such films without doing this, the closest to avoid it I feel were The Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick, 1998) and The Pianist (Roman Polanski, 2002). I really tend to find Second World War films a bit tiresome and trite, but this is one of the better ones, for the obvious reason that the war for the most part only remains in the background. Obviously, at the “heart” of the story is the friendship, but it also works well as a coming of age story, using the war as an excuse for the lead character to grow up.
For me though, the strongest aspect of this film was it dealing with the reasons for cultural barriers. The kids seem to refer to Jews as something merely abstract, simply because they don’t know them upfront, and in this case the film is actually still pretty relevant, as this is still going on. Their not anti-Semitic, but at the same time they don’t disapprove with the Germans treatment of Jews. Most of their comments on Jews seem right out of a textbook, which I would find fairly accurate to how kids without any critical knowledge would know these other religious people. It’s a really great observation, when the Jewish kid first arrives, they treat him like an outsider. Not because he’s Jewish, they don’t know yet, but simply because he’s new and they don’t know him. When they start to discover that he is a Jew, they don’t treat him any differently because he’s by then come into the fold. I find this is a good statement about how our religious backgrounds are just bullocks. Its also nice to see Catholics for once given dignity, and I do think the priests at the school should be honoured for taking in Jewish kids at the risk of their own personal safety, even though they are from different religions, again discussing this idea of religious background, we are still in the same shit. Sure, they are given their bit of ridicule through some slight humour, but it’s never truly mean spirited. Oh and by the way, the film didn’t manage to avoid the Nazi character that seems right out of a Superman cartoon, but it almost seems unavoidable in any Second World War film.
This is a very good film, with some really fantastic moments and genuine emotions. It has some elements that are true splendour, and some that are slightly weaker. It doesn’t come together as well as one would wish, but its individual pros make it more than worthwhile. I don’t really know why this is Malle’s most famous film, maybe because of the approachable themes and setting and being relatively “new”, but still, I preferred Le Feu Follet (Louis Malle, 1963)
No comments:
Post a Comment