Bruno Dumont: Flandres (2006)

[Chris Knipp]

Bruno Dumont: Flandres (2006)

Again, I am opening a thread for anyone to comment on this film which I hope to write about later. I just saw it in Paris today, and was surprized after the disappointing Twentynine Palms to find something masterful and brief. Reviews had suggested it was offputting, long, and dull. It's not. Dumont tells the basic war story: man leaves girlfriend with pals to go to war. War is nasty, brutish, and short. He escapes with survivor guilt, minus a best friend, and returns to the girlfriend who has freaked out and needed treatment in his absence. Both are traumatized, but the ending is still sweet and hopeful. Andre' is a cloddish farm boy, but he has a nice smile and his final line is "Je t'aime." I was not at all as surprised at the Grand Prix at Cannes as I had expected to be. The focus and economy here are impressive.

Has anyone else seen it?

[Johann]

Nope.

But I want to see it bad.
I read about in Film Comment's *late* coverage of Cannes.


So are you sippin' margaritas by the Seine?

[Chris Knipp]

BRUNO DUMONT: FLANDRES

Powerful return to form for Dumont

Review by Chris Knipp

My sense of the pointlessness of Alfonso Cuarón's badly written but flashily shot new sci-fi thriller, Children of Men, was heightened by seeing a good film later in the same late October day in Paris: Bruno Dumont's 2006 Cannes Grand Prix winner, Flandres. Flandres is about men pushed to their limits in situations we know are happening every day and have happened for millennia: young men leaving girlfriends, families, going to war, and coming back guilty and damaged. But as things tend to go, no one in the US is getting to see Flandres, while the man in the street is already proclaiming Children of Men the movie of the year.

In Children of Men it's 2027 and everything on the planet has gone wrong. Everything has gone wrong with the scenario, too. Nothing is explained, and nothing quite computes. Every country's been trashed, we're told (we see one news still per continent in a hasty rundown), except England. We've heard that one before. It's always down to the country where the film was shot, or is supposed to happen. Why England is considered not trashed, since every scene shows bombs going off, clashes in the street, general messes, and hordes of "aliens" being confined to cages and carted off to concentration camps, is a bit hard to figure. Cuarón's England of 21 years from now is a world of violence and repression worthy of Orwell's 1984; but like that story, this one has already passed its expiry date. It'll take a bit more then 21 years to reach this stage of decline.

Somehow there are groups with names like "the Fish" that have banded together to try to protect themselves in a world void of safety or trust. Though nobody knows why, all women are infertile now -- worldwide. (Other countries still exist; they just aren't worth shooting film footage in.) The youngest person on the planet has just died in Latin America--that is, the youngest guy; he was eighteen and something. A girl is now the youngest. So what?

Enter Clive Owen, our man in a pinch. He's rounded up by Julienne Moore, who's the head of the Fish and once was married to him. she wants his help getting somebody passage out of the area. He refuses, but is taken off to the country later anyway to meet Michael Caine, done up with long wavy white hair as an aging hippy with a deluxe hippy pad out in the woods, where he deals dope to prison guards, apparently. Warning: people die like flies in this movie, and though everything is elaborately worked out, nothing makes any particular sense.

It next emerges that a young English black woman is pregnant, and the project is to get her to safety. I didn't quite get why this led to her being taken into a prison camp teeming with weeping and wailing foreign nut cases, or why she was then led on to a full-scale rebellion in town and a large building that's gradually being blown to pieces. Eventually she makes it to a buoy and a boat named Tomorrow comes to pick her up. Symbolic, I guess.

This movie is a chaotic actioner robbed of real content. How did the world go so wrong? Why all the violence and disorder? Haven't scientist's got any idea about this global infertility? And by the way, how is one child going to help? If only one woman is fertile, will siblings have to mate? Won't that be unhealthy? And won't that take a good long while? What about the general disorder? What has the xenophobia got to do with the infertility?

What we have here is just an excuse for a lot of ersatz violence, which one can't care about since one doesn't know its cause -- except the government's rounding up of all aliens in cages and concentration camps. And why on earth do Clive and the pregnant girl wind up in that camp and the crumbling building during the insurrection? And in a pitched battle with bombs going off, why do they rush to the top of a building? It seems as though the general urgency is just supposed to be a given we must accept. I don't. Children of Men is disturbing, unpleasant, and confusing. A number of quite good actors are wasted in it. What possessed Cuarón to take on this project?

In a way, Bruno Dumont's Flandres is no more realistic than Cuarón's Children of Men. It doesn't exactly seek to depict real people or a real war. Dumont's people are laconic, but the powerful filmmaking tells a clear and moving story. Using sinple, economical means and focusing on a few individuals, presenting scenes that follow a logical, universal progression, Flandres is able to tell a profound story about war's ravages at home and on the front. Dumont's storytelling is simple and sure. So is the cinematography of Yves Cape and the editing of Guy Lacorne. And so is the acting, especially of Samuel Boidin as Démester and of Adélaïde Leroux as his girlfriend Barbe -- but also of Henri Cretel as Démester's friend Blondel, and of Jean-Marie Bruveart (Briche), David Poulain (Leclercq), Patirce Venant (Mordac), David Legay ( (Lieutenant) and Inge Decaesteker (France).

The film focuses on a young farmer and his girlfriend. He and some other locals are going off to war. Last sex, last drinks with friends, last campfire gatherings, last work in the field with a tractor.

Then, the departure: roll call, near a truck, a few people waving goodbye. Next Démester is in the desert. In an attempt to take a building (a scene we know well through documentary news footage from Iraq) one of their officers is blown up. A helicopter takes away the body. They enter the building and kill a couple of youthful partisans -- fighters, clearly, but also mere pitiful boys.

Each of the scenes is iconic and vivid. This is low-budget war, but it feels real enough. How big is the budget of a few men fighting out in the bush? There are tanks and explosions aplenty. Most of all there is sweat and dust and blood. Two other things happen. The squad captures a woman fighter, and some of the men rape her. Later, on a hillside, they trap a farmer on a donkey loaded with firewood, and they shoot him. They are subsequently captured by members of the enemy (who are North African--but their dialogue isn't translated; and they could be Iraqis) who know what they have done, and they are severely punished.

Meanwhile André's (Démester's) girlfriend Barbe at home grows more and more unstable and after a violent psychotic break, she is hospitalized, but later released.

André escapes with his friend Blondel, but when Blondel's shot, he runs off to save himself.

Dumont uses the inarticulate country talk of the people to underline the universality of the events. How did Blondel die, his girlfriend wants to know later? "Balle dans la tête," Démester says; a bullet in the head. That's all he wants to say, and all we need to know. Démester is a brute, in a way. But he's also got a sweet smile. He's childlike. He is the child sent off to kill that all war builds upon.

Next we see Démester back home. The final sequences convey how damaged he and his girlfriend and his friend's girlfriend are now. André suffers from survivor guilt. Their state is pitiful, but the last shot is positive. André is lying on the dirt with Barbe and telling her over and over "Je t'aime...je t'aime." I love you.

This is classic Dumont style, if on a bolder and grander scale than before. His people are none the less noble, pathetic, and human for being reduced to simplicity, even crudity. Dumont has told a story as energetic and forward-driven as the Dardennes brothers' L'Enfant, but more universal, and even more concise (91 rather than 100 minutes). As in Dumont's L'Humanité and La Vie de Jésus, there's a grandeur that emerges from the stripped-down, minimal scenes and people. Everything works. It's surprising that Variety's usually canny reviewer made it sound dull and off-putting. There is still resistence to Dumont's style.

[oscar jubis]

Originally posted by Chris Knipp
But as things tend to go, no one in the US is getting to see Flandres, while the man in the street is already proclaiming Children of Men the movie of the year.

Three different distributors released Dumont's three films and they all lost money. Award or no award, there may not be a distributor willing to buy the rights to Flandres. There will be isolated screeninmgs in the US but perhaps not an actual release. I'm a fan of Dumont's first two films so, given the good critical response, I'll probably end up importing the dvd from the UK. Children of Men premiered there and "the man in the street" there is mighty impressed. As you know, Cuaron's film just opened in the rest of Europe and is coming here at the end of December. Extremely high IMdb user ratings for this picture which to me means no more or less than "strong geek/fanboy appeal".

[Chris Knipp]

You are right about Children of Men, and I was referring to IMDb Comments. IT's too bad about Flandres: it could be his best yet.

[oscar jubis]

I watched Flandres recently. As a fan of L'Humanite and La Vie de Jesus, I was looking forward to the film with great interest (I regarded 29 Palms as an anomaly). I cannot say I was disappointed with Flandres but I have to face the fact that I didn't enjoy it as much as the two films abovementioned. I really like Dumont's trademark alternate long shots and close-ups, and I love the performances he gets from persons with little or no experience. I also like the way he frames scenes. All that is here, no doubt. I would have to say that my most specific reaction is a sense of "been there done that" about the content. The joyless, almost mechanical sex, the tendency to regard rural types are brutes or "crudes", the refusal to explore the characters beyond what is obvious to the casual observer...these things don't seem as fresh to me anymore. I think it's clear that he imbues the war scenes with a certain universality by being vague about time and place...but I don't think Dumont is saying anything new, or finding new ways to give expression to time-tested truths about conflict and war, or taking the characters and the milieu and making it his own. The scenes in the title town do have a certain particularity that's more distinctive, even though it's basically the same place of La Vie de Jesus. Flandres is still worth watching, for many reasons, but it seems to me that Dumont needs to seek new sources of inspiration.

[Chris Knipp]

it seems to me that Dumont needs to seek new sources of inspiration.

'The joyless, almost mechanical sex, the tendency to regard rural types [as] brutes or "crudes", the refusal to explore the characters beyond what is obvious to the casual observer...these things don't seem as fresh to me anymore.'

Actually the combat sequences are new and provide a very different context for the rest. Not sure why it all feels no longer fresh to you. And you say,"The scenes in the title town do have a certain particularity that's more distinctive," and also 'Flandres is still worth watching, for many reasons.' So I donlt know what you're saying is wrong other than that the people and settings remain unchanged. But so do a lot of good fimmakers'--and Jane Austen wrote about the same corner of provincial bourgeois English life in all her novels, yet still managed to be a great writer.

So if something is wrong with Dumont with FLANDERS, what is it? Not sure what it would mean or what force it would have to say one didn't "enjoy" this film as much as Dumont's early ones, since enjoyment isn't something one would see his work as designed to bring about, anyway, and looking for it in any form in a comment tends to provide a confusing context for a discussion of the director's work. Of course, there have already been plenty who for one reason or another haven't liked Dumont's films, objecting to the very things you mention as having lost their appeal for you. Obviously Dumont isn't every an easy watch, but that couldn't be the problem, since you welcome challenges and love some directors whose films in the opinion of many are hard to sit through.

These people are inarticulate, and yes, they are, or appear, crude. But such people haven't ceased to exist. Obviously you'd agree that if TWENTYNINE PALMS is an example of a "new source of inspiration," that doesn't look like a fruitful course for Dumont..

As I tried to make clear, the whole film left vivid impressions that still stay with me. In my review I've tried to show why I find his method still valid and powerful in this specific film. I said for example "Dumont uses the inarticulate country talk of the people to underline the universality of the events." I also pointed out the characters aren't simply brutes. In part they simply seem cruder than they are because they are so inarticulate. Viewers are challenged to learn sympathy and so their sense of humanity is enriched. Don't think that is less true of FLANDERS than of HUMANITY and THE LIFE OF JESUS.

[oscar jubis]

It's clear you understand I don't give a shit about a film being pleasant or "an easy watch" or any of that middle-brow crap. I don't summarily dismiss any films for being grim or pessimistic, for instance. I don't think that makes any given film better or worse. As a matter of fact, I found the ending of Flandres rather hopeful (Demester's sincere declaration of love). I was surprised it didn't move me the way it should. I had the weird feeling throughout the whole film that I had seen it before; the scenes if Flandres felt borrowed from Dumont's debut and the war scenes reminded me of films by other directors. I wish my criticism was more pointed than that but it's hard. I felt for instance that Barbe was basically the same character as the girl from La Vie de Jesus. I wonder if that's bound to happen to an anti-psychological director like Dumont. That's my stab at being critical. It's clear Flandres is not a bad film. I certainly don't have any animosity towards the film but I cannot fake enjoyment and edification beyond the naturalistic performances, the mise-en-scene, the choreography of shots.

[Chris Knipp]

The point where I most differ from you is that I do not find the war sequences reminiscent of any others by anybody else. If this discussion didn't feel like it was winding down I'd ask you for specific examples and comparisons but going over war scenes can be rather harrowing, the worst kind of drudgery when the enthusiasm isn't there. If you were left relatively cold by the war narrative, that could make the whole film seem to you just a buildup to nothing much! The newness of Flandres rests on the success or failure of the Johnny-goes-off-to-war element. For me, it works very well; for you, not. That is the central action of the film; the "here" segments (as Jacques Mandelbaum in a Le Monde article named them) are simply bookends for the "there" segment that changes everything for the protagonists. That is the crucial element. If it doesn't work for you, then the film is just "interesting," admirable in not being that easy-watch shit you despise, but nothing to get really excited about, ponder deep within yourself, debate ardently with others.

I agree that the ending is hopeful and thought i had said so in my review above, but apparently didn't; I thought it anyway but may have written it and later deleted it. For me this is a very moving moment because the hhope comes out of such confusion and despair; it's as if the girl is as shell-shocked and war-traumatized as the boy.

Of course in theory at least, despite my finding Flandres to be an extremely fine piece of work, I can relate to your sense that Dumont's method and outlook seemed stunning and new in L'Huamnite and La Vie de Jesus, and it's less surprising now because the novelty has worn off. I saw the first one at home on my VCR but the second in a theater in San Francisco and I can remember getting into an intense discussion of it with a complete stranger on the way out of the theater; there was that kind of stimulation. Anbd I think Dumont remains an artist whose work you have to bring passion to and walk out of ready to debate about. Nonetheless that shock of the new of Dumont's elemental provincial people with their simple, seemingly deadening lives is gone and all that remains in response to their presence in Flandres is gratitude that the detour of Twentynine Palms has been left behind and the basic concerns have come back--unless one responds powerfuly and viscerally to the war scenes.