Flanders

It's clear from other reviews that more or less everybody is agreed about the director's rather tricksy film-making and the lack of conventional narrative drive. It's just a question of whether you think these things make for a good film or a bad film.

For me, the good outweighs the bad: the deliberately non-emotional characterization, slow pace, and powerful use of landscape push viewers out of their comfort zone, and force us to confront some pretty basic realities about life and war.

It's the parallels - not the contrasts - between home life and the war that are most interesting. On many occasions, the film seems to have a deliberately timeless, ahistorical feel, so that the characters feel tremendously elemental (the word medieval springs to mind too) in their behaviours and concerns. Despite a slight lack of coherence (not necessarily in the plot, more in the overall conception), we do genuinely somehow care for the characters - quite an achievement given the overall tone of the movie.

The use of Flanders as the setting and title reinforces this sense of historical continuity, of war recurring down through the ages - not for nothing is the region known as "the cockpit of Europe". And by the way, a big chunk of historical Flanders is now in France (the French-plated cars, with "59" indicating the North department which includes most of French Flanders, are a giveaway). French Flanders is by definition not in Belgium, as one reviewer has suggested. However, one of the female characters (Barbe's friend) appears to have a strong Flemish (i.e. Dutch-speaking) accent - a nice touch, and not entirely implausible in this border region, where a few people still speak Flemish on the French side of the border (visit Hondschoote, and you'll see what I mean).

This film should make everybody rethink their approach to war, and the impact of sending young men (and women, although not in this film) from more or less every generation off to fight and die (remember that Flanders was scarred by war twice in a lifetime in the 20th century). Not necessarily a particularly easy watch on the face of it, but a powerful and worthwhile one.

In a grey and uncharming part of France, these farming people live. Life is quiet. You start a relation with the girl in the neighbor house. Life would have remained quiet if it wasn't for war. Or...? There's a shocking contrast here, between the silent life and the brutal battles in Africa. It directly affects also life at home, in an almost as brutal way. Can the things we've done, those wounds, be healed? Maybe they can after all.

A very tense drama, which is sometimes hard to watch. Well acted, and very far from mainstream action, especially when it comes to psychological violence.

This film is about a group of young men going off to war. In this far away land, they leave marks to themselves and to the enemies by their lack of morality.

I guess I have to be in a certain mood to enjoy this film. It is highly minimalistic, as it has no soundtrack or extravagant sets. The pacing is extremely slow. It basically features people walking around half the time (and I am very serious), with occasional highly disturbing scenes interspersed in the second half of the film. There is very little dialog in it, and many dramatic scenes are very minimally delivered. For example, the helicopter rescue scene, it could have been made a real drama and thriller but it was so minimal. Flandres could have been a moving tale of morality, but instead tested my endurance.

Bruno Dumont is back in form here with his fourth release (I found the plot of his previous "Twentynine Palms" to be flawed). Any of you who saw 'The Life of Jesus'('97) and/or 'Humanity'('99) can expect much of the same in terms of style; and to a certain extent, themes as well. This is by no means an easy film to watch (the war scenes, shot in Tunisia, are, at times, just dreadful). And even the storyline which takes place in Flandres, in the north of France (where Dumont is from, and his first two films are set), is full of emotional pain. A very French film, but not of the condescending, intellectual sort, but rather of the realistic, naturalistic, and yes, minimalistic variety. To be seen on the big screen for full effect.

It's remarkable that this film is not more popular. It successfully strips away the veneer of "civilisation" (false morality, good manners etc) and shows people as selfish, brutal animals, and depicts modern, asymmetrical warfare as a terrible nightmare where a group of brutish white thugs rape and murder a terrified, technologically backward society (nearly all of whom are defenceless/ poorly armed women and children) before finally being made to suffer a grim but deserved humiliation for their actions. Oh, actually, what am I saying? It'll be a bloody surprise if it ever comes out in North America properly, given the hypocritical, righteous atmosphere of self-delusion that currently permeates this society, a society underpinned by exactly the kind of abuse and violence that this film describes.