Beau travail (1999)

The medium of film is blessed with the fact that with it, it is possible to exploit the merits of almost every artform. Film can make use of still imagery, like painting and photography, and three-dimensional (albeit in a virtual sense) imagery, like sculpture. It is music with visuals - theatre without physical restrictions. Hence, the possibilities of film are more numerous than any one other artform. However, the medium's potential remains largely unexplored, as very few film-makers venture far past conventional dialogue-based storytelling. As a means of story-telling, film is inferior to literature. The book, after all, is almost always better than the film. Dialogue-based storytelling is simply not the medium's forté. Claire Denis, with Beau Travail, has reminded us of this by making a beautiful , and powerful, film which is told largely through imagery. The subject of Beau Travail is very masculine: Men in the foreign legion - and in particular, one man's bitter obsession with another when he feels his 'alpha male' status threatened. The manner in which the film is made, however, is very feminine. Instead of a logical, cause-and-effect structure, the film has an ethereal fluidity. It is less made up of scenes, than it is of dozens of segments - most of them devoid of a narrative - which flow in and out past each other, sometimes reappearing later on, sometimes not. In one such segment, the tense relationship between Galoup and Sentain is shown as the two, eyes fixed, circle each other as if in some sort of surreal, hate-driven ritual. This moment, while being far removed from real human behaviour is, through its striking symbolism, as telling of the characters' inner experiences as any dialogue between them could be. Denis focuses on the details of the mens' lives in long, fascinated shots, observing almost every element of their lives - how they exercise, rest, fight, dance, swim, iron, eat, and hate. She sees the beauty of both the men and the world they inhabit, and shows this beauty as an integral (if not THE integral) part of the film. These many studied observations are small elements that, together, make up a remarkably rich whole. They form a film which has a depth and subtlety of perception which most male directors could not, in my opinion, achieve.

Written by Dawid Bleja

Fmovies: BEAU TRAVAIL is a curious film. It is based on the story 'Billy Budd' by Herman Melville and on the operatic adaptation by EM Forster of Benjamin Britten's magnificent BILLY BUDD and has all the right pieces in place to make a fine, updated adaptation of the story. Unfortunately the script fails to find the message of the story and so there is much correct atmosphere but little character development.

The original story revolves around a warship (The Rights o' Man) in the French and English war that takes on recruits while at sea. The Captain relates the story of how he was forced to hang the magnificently beautiful and loved new recruit Billy Budd because of an accidental death in part due to Budd's fatal flaw - his stammer. The Master at Arms notices Billy from the beginning as a creature of physical beauty and there is a strong physical attraction to the lad. Unable to cope with his feelings, the Master at Arms plots for the downfall of the object of his desire and lust and it is his manipulation that results in Billy's hanging, nearly causing a mutiny by Billy's shipmates. Billy is a Parsifal character - a 'guileless fool', who even in his sentencing to death still blesses the Captain of the ship.

All well and good. The film here transplants much of this tale to a Foreign Legion outpost in Africa, and much of the above is insinuated. The appropriation is so complete that portions of Britten's opera BILLY BUDD are used to set scenes. But there the magic stops. The 'master at arms' does not seem to desire the beautiful recruit but for some unexplained reason seeks to have him gone. Such a shame. It is as though the writer wanted to avoid homosexual overtones of the original and as a result the characters have no where to go. All of the actors are good, the scenery is bleak (a desert here instead of the bleak sea of the original)and appropriate, the music is an eclectic mix that works. All the ingredients are here to make a fine film, but it just doesn't come off. The director needed to see the old film version of Billy Budd starring Terrence Stamp to see that pitting the evil, sadistic, lusty master at arms against the virile, sensitive and good young man can and does work well.

"French Foreign Legion of the mind" is close, but I think a better epitome would be a meditation on wasted potential. If there is a theme that runs through Claire Denis' movies, it is civilization and its discontents, and this is her best work on the subject yet. The imagery alludes to Antonioni's "The Passenger" and rightly so: both films treat the annihilation of identity, although Denis' vision is ultimately darker. The last scene is the most haunting since the ending to Tarkovsky's "Andrei Rublev."

Sure, the voice-over is awkward, but Calvin Klein is absolutely the wrong referent here. Far apter would be Leni Riefenstahl.

Beau travail fmovies. As a 10 year veteran of the Marines during peace time, I loved how this movie captured the often times dull, daily routine of military life. The scenes of the legionaires meticulously ironing their uniforms, training, exercising, were very accurate and brought back a lot of memories. To some, these scenes may seem boring and belabored but I found them mesmerizing and wishing they would last longer. I also feel she somewhat captured the sometimes complicated feelings of love, hate, respect, jealousy, etc. of men living together in a military environment. Robert Ryan did a better job at being hateful in the movie "Billy Budd" than Lavant does here as Galoup. I saw him as more a tragic figure and ended up feeling sorry for him. Sorry because he ruined a life that he loved. The movie was visually beautiful. I was somewhat confused, if not fascinated, by the dance scene at the end. What does that signify?

The film's message about the goodness and innocence of Setain, and the malice of Sargeant Galoup, is too subtle for the film's own good, and comes across as being undeveloped.

Why doesn't Galoup more deeply question his hatred for Setain? I was a bit dismayed that this wasn't questioned much, even if there weren't any answers. Also, the film's marketing makes the film sound lurid and sexual, whereas it is not. Perhaps to draw in more viewers for an otherwise dry and sparse depiction of man's senselessness.

The film initially shows a lot of promise. The interaction among the men is more comradeship than anything else. I was interested in the depiction of Legionnaire military life, especially from the various other countries.

_Beau travail_ gives proof that French cinema can still produce masterpieces. This adaptation of Melville focuses on Vere rather than Billy and on a ritualistic masculine life that has lost its function and degenerated into sterile rivalry. It shows the subtle triumph of the female principle in this harsh environment without ever striking a discordant ideological note. The cinematography displaying the men against the desert is breathtaking, and the rhythm of the narrative sequences builds tension with a brilliant economy of means. Even the French is beautifully written. The best French film I've seen in years (and I've seen quite a few).