CAPTAIN CONAN Movie Review

Capitaine Conan

In 1918, as World War I nears its end, a band of French soldiers—fierce, despondent, dazed, disease-ridden, and lusting for revenge—refuses to stop fighting. Slogging through the mud in Bulgaria, this small regiment doesn't find out about the end of the war until months after the armistice, which only increases their frustration and rage. Based on a true and long-forgotten chapter of French history as chronicled in a 1934 autobiographical novel by Roger Vercel, this is a compassionate and gripping portrait of the tragic choices even honorable men can make when existing under savage conditions. Capitaine Conan is like a large-scale epic as seen through a microscope—while spectacle and horror are a major part of the landscape, the actual focus is on those private, instantaneous moments of judgment that we make, for better or worse, in the midst of chaos. Capitaine Conan's director, Bertrand Tavernier, is one of France's most humane and generous-spirited national treasures. On this occasion at least, the French film industry recognized that fact by awarding the film the César (France's Oscar) for Best Picture of the Year.

NEXT STOP … Life and Nothing But, Béatrice, Paths of Glory

1996 129m/C FR Philippe Torreton, Samuel Lebihan, Bernard Le Coq, Pierre Val, Francois Berleand, Claude Rich, Catherine Rich; D: Bertrand Tavernier; W: Bertrand Tavernier, Jean Cosmos; C: Alain Choquart; M: Oswald D'Andrea. Cesar Awards '97: Best Actor (Torreton), Best Director (Tavernier), Best Film. VHS, Letterbox KIV