Life and Nothing But

Propagandists of war like historian John Keegan lead one to believe that the dead of WWI were properly identified and decorously buried in one piece (as he says, in cemeteries "breathtaking in their beauty"). The haunting image of long rows of white crosses comes to mind. This movie shows a vastly different reality. After he war, besides the official number of a million and a half French dead there were 350,000 missing in action. The protagonist, Major Delaplane (Philippe Noiret) is in charge of the unenviable task of locating (and hopefully identifying) the corpses haphazardly dispersed all over the French countryside. His immediate task as the movie opens is the identification of thousands of soldiers suffocated or buried in a bombed railway tunnel under danger of collapse. This is complicated by the families of the disappeared swarming the excavation site, tying up transport scouring nearby hospitals and trying to get clues from the corpses' personal effects. Delaplane is also tasked with delivering some truly unidentifiable cadavers, one of which is to be buried in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the foot of the the Arc de Triomphe, Among his instructions: avoid Algerian, black or Chinese (actually Vietnamese) corpses.

There are disquieting indications.that the business of cleaning up after the war is beginning to be mixed with selling the next one. Andre Maginot is involved in the search for the unknown corpse (Maginot will be the designer of the famed Maginot Line, that was to make the French-German boundary impregnable but didn't). Marshals and generals bask in glory; one of them, General Cherfils solemnly states "War's devastating allure only appears to be destructive," There are touches of black humor all over; one is about a town that (as all towns) sent soldiers to the front. None were killed, thus there is no pretext for building a memorial and the town fears being accused of collective cowardice and/or lack of patriotism for lack of corpses.

Beside Delaplane. the main characters are two women looking for their missing (and presumed dead) mates. One is the entitled, wealthy Parisian Irene (Sabine Azéma) the other the provincial school teacher Alice (Pascale Vignal). Reluctantly and uneasily the major and Irene build an uneasy relationship that evolves into something like love, although Delaplane seems at the end of his tether and unable to open up.

I saw this movie shortly after its release and recently, and I liked it then and now. It does many things well. The script, by director Bertrand Tavernier and Jean Cosmos is clear, direct and to the point, and in spite of its length no part is superfluous. Direction is fluid and acting first rate. The film carries a special meaning in these times where think tanks and the Pentagon cooly plan for the unthinkable and Hollywood movies glorify war. It delivers an antiwar message as powerful as "All Quiet in the Western Front" or the poetry of Wilfred Owen.