The Sentinel

A student in medicine finds a severed head, well preserved and embalmed, in his luggage, on a trip from Berlin to Paris. His father is the late French ambasador in Eastern Germany. Why the head is here ? Where does it come from ? Why him ? For what purpose? He doesn't know. At first, he forgets about the head and tries to make friends, builds his life and keep studying but... he soon becomes obsessed with the head. Since he is the only one to know then he bears the responsibility to find out why and for what... The movie starts slowly and gains in intensity as the story develops. The cast is remarkable and the characters are all touching. The magic of the movie is that it possesses the same complexity as a Dostoeivski novel (really). It works in a very subtle way, making its way unnoticed to your mind and memory... I did not like it the first time I saw it, but months after, years after, La Sentinelle came back haunt me... and I had to see it again, just like I sometimes read over again a book that has depths I missed the first time.