The War Is Over

"Patience and irony are the chief virtues of a Bolshevik."

Beautifully shot, with splashes of visual flair, like the fast edits or the scenes with the exquisite shimmering of light on the ceiling, an echo of the haze of looking back on a life of an underground struggle against fascism in Spain following the Civil War. The film highlights the need for perseverance, brotherhood, and sacrifice over the long haul to achieve regime change, as well as the melancholy that comes from perceiving that at some point one's own personal "war" may be over, but the movement will continue on in younger hands.

I loved the idea of it, but unfortunately, the story is about as dry as toast, and it takes far too long to get to the most interesting bit, which was the old guard revolutionary (Yves Montand) confronted with newer radicals who disagree with him on tactics. I wish that part had been more developed. There is just too much time spent on mundane aspects beforehand, the details for which were rather muddled, to sustain a two hour film. Even the presence of Geneviève Bujold and Ingrid Thulin couldn't save it from being a dull affair, and how Resnais shot the love scene between Bujold and Montand in such a (nearly comical) artsy way didn't help matters. As an exercise in filmmaking and with these stars, it holds some level of interest, but it's hard to see how anyone could get excited over it. Seeing it once was enough.

This film has aged rather well considering that it's nearly 40 years old, that the concrete political situation(the Franco dictatorship in Spain)it was enmeshed in has disappeared, and that the musical score, the very mannered montage, and the sex scenes are all hopelessly dated and stilted. What gives this film its vitality is the screenplay written by Jorge Semprun, and it resonates today as well as it did in the mid-60s. Semprun had just written his classic, "The Long Voyage", in 1963, and the crisp trenchancy of his narrative style is just as evident in this film as it was in that story of his 1944 voyage to Buchenwald as a captured fighter of the French Resistance. Though we may not feel any longer the need to reassess the strategy of how to overthrow Franco, we still know what it's like to feel you're at the end of the rope with no place to leap to (both politically and psychologically). What Semprun reminds us, both in this film and in "The Long Voyage," is that it's the opportunities to experience solidarity with and support for others over the course of the journey that matters in the end.

Alain Resnais was part of the so-called Left Bank of the French New Wave, alongside with Varda, Marker and Demy, who were politically much more aware compared to the film fanatics of Cahiers du Cinema (Rohmer, Truffaut, Rivette, Godard, Chabrol). Alain Resnais has always been interested in past but here he focuses on its impact with regards to the future. The War Is Over was his fourth feature, following Hiroshima mon amour, Last Year in Marienbad and Muriel, and still remains as one of the finest films of political cinema. The film builds around the theme of how to come to terms with one's past in order to live in peace with the present. No other place -- maybe Germany or Poland -- offers such a great setting for this but Spain because the shadows of the Civil War are so present. It is a milieu that has become the symbol of the war, so to speak.

Diego Mora (Yves Montad) is an old man who spent his youth as a revolutionary in the Spanish Civil War. Now, thirty years later, he's part of a group that wants to redeem the dreams of the revolution in Paris. All the members of the group are living in the past, and so is Diego. But soon he has a moment of realization and breaks himself away from the chains of illusion and decides to make a change. Thus, The War Is Over is really a story about a man who is living a lie. It tells, rather bleakly in a melancholy tone, about old communists who can't let go off the past.

The War Is Over might just be Resnais' most satisfying work when it comes to somewhat coherent viewing experience. It's his first film with a clear storyline which is relatively easy to follow even if the editing was deliberately (but not self-deliberate!) ambiguous and confusing. Resnais has succeeded perfectly to relay the flow of time. Moreover, through the character played by Yves Montand the viewer can understand the director's thoughts and emotions, no matter how shattered, because he holds the pieces together. It is he through whom the viewer constructs the big picture.

In The War Is Over memories are created for the future. Alain Resnais doesn't try to build the horrors of the past by newsreel footage. He relays the tragedy of the conditions by showing how people are still living in the past, how they are left with unredeemed dreams in their hands. The dream has died in Spain. Of course, Spain is still there but merely as a concrete place full of tourists. People don't understand each other. There is a major breakdown in the communication between the old and the new left. Both are dreaming of a revolution but in their own ways. The legacy of the past torments the protagonist. However, he is not only forced to recall the past endlessly but also to be unable to understand the present reality.

Alain Resnais was almost a god of cinema in the 60's. That people actually discussed the meaning of Last Year at Marienbad at parties seems unbelievable today (yet check the posts for Mulholland Drive), but it was a cultural object just as real as a Picasso painting. If I say that La Guerre est finie has aged badly, that's not to say that it didn't hold the attention of liberals 40 years ago.

The politics of the main (male) characters are fossilized. The old Bolshevik ideals have become more and more detached from reality. Diego knows that there will be no general strike in Spain on May 1st, no matter how hard they will it to happen. Pamphlets smuggled by car into the country in false compartments are not being translated into actions. Diego's lack of authenticity is his real problem: he's spent most of his life in France, speaks better French than Spanish, and is watching people 20 years younger than himself taking more radical steps to end Franco's rule.

Marianne has a greater grasp of reality than her lover. After nine years with Diego, she just wants to settle down and have kids, and put an end to the endless coded conversations with her friends (who are ignorant of Diego's revolutionary activities). She watches as Diego gets sloppy--driving with lights out while there's a suitcase full of plastic explosives in the car, as a cop stops them for questioning.

Semprun's script makes Montand into a sexual magnet; has any 20-year-old girl taken off her clothes faster for a tired 45-year-old man? The star system dictates that the male lead be a stud, but there are limits.

Yves Montand is a Spaniard in exile in Paris, a Communist working for the central committee in exile in Paris, trying to jump-start the Revolution. He's very professional about what he does. But the Spanish government has arrested agents and he realizes he's grown tired of the never-ending struggle, the insistence of the committee in Paris that their view from a distance gives them better insight than the people who are stationed in Spain. His lover, Ingrid Thulin wants his child, and he indulges in.a tired rant in front of her friends./coworkers tat everything moves and nothing changes.

Montand gives a fine performance as a man growing tired of the always hopeful attitude of the revolutionaries, their insistance on working out the details of life, anxious to snatch small bits of autonomy wherever he can He has grown tired of being a good soldier who sees no end to the war. Will he remain a good soldier? Can he? And what if he cannot?

Alain Resnais movie is far more straightforward than his other works, although he does make liberal use of flashbacks and interpolative stills. With Geneviève Bujold, Jean Dasté, and Michel Piccoli.