Forever Untold...Almost

DAYS OF GLORY

Rachid Bouchareb

Algeria

2006

With the local title as “Indigenes” or ‘indigenous”, literally in English, the movie is a visually sweeping wartime story of discrimination. Interesting nevertheless is the fact that this movie focuses on an internal war on an external historical background. This internal war is so relatively succulent, for discrimination has always been existent in any society, nation, or country. I love the inevitable manoeuvring of this internal war from the external war which is the world war, this makes the film expand its narrative and cinematic elements to a splendid experience accompanied by overwhelming cinematography. The war might be over but this war of discrimination is not yet ending, if not ending, as what the final scene of the film suggests when the old Abdulkader visited the tomb of his fellow Algerian soldiers at the bottom end of the cemetery hill while the one of their commander is located at the peak. I commend the film for being unpredictably non-victorious. While most of the films out there are gravely triumphantly-ended, and most of the better war films also critically acclaimed internationally also share a mate-ended finale, “Days of Glory” stood out because it talks about a different war. Yes there are hints of Communism versus Capitalism, the Allied forces versus the Axis powers, but it never came to a point to overpower the simple yet continuously unresolved ideological mechanic of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity—the French Revolution slogan—that is supposed to be achieved centuries ago.

“Days of Glory” started with the young Said, an Algerian native, convincing her mother to have him joining the French army, Algeria being obviously a colony of France. At the camp, he is surrounded by Abdulkader, the Algerian captain that serves as the superior of them indigenous soldiers but is of course inferior to their French chief. Said is a man who is content, or from a stand point of an ambitious man, he is a fool, a shallow-dreaming even non-dreaming fool content to be a peasant or a servant or a soldier of the lowest rank. He is a representation of the discriminated. Jamel Debbouze as Said, gave a respectable performance. The character he is playing has a greater chance of audience to get annoyed than to get moved, and I got the latter with his naïve performance. His death can be quite a statement though, that under-dreamers are doomed but a lovely character will always be redeemed before everything ends. Said dies as he is trying to aid their discriminating, bed-ridden French chief to escape, who he hopes to die after beating him when he learns that this French official has an Algerian origin but who Abdulkader wishes to be treated and survive until they win this war. The French chief is definitely the bad guy here. Hiding and ashamed of his indigenous past, he has no other direction but from up to the deepest down. Abdulkader, the Algerian captain who dreams of being promoted in the French army is the owner of the final point of view. He is the only who survived among the four Algerian soldiers excluding their French chief. This is another statement that the ones who dreams survive. I admire the twisting of this cliché. Obviously, Abdulkader only survived living until his white-haired age but surviving the battle he used to be fighting—no. But he generates the most important spark of life—hope. Abdulkader’s oldness at the final scene of the film poignantly denotes the timelessness of the battle against discrimination all for the elusive hands of fraternity.

I have always been conscious about points of views. Who possesses the eye, not just of the current scene or sequence but of all the totality of the film? The fewer or the more consistent the point of view is the better the film becomes because they always add to the clarity of what the characters really want, if they have really developed, or if they have really achieved or failed their objectives. Other than that, the more restricted the point of view is, the more attached we become to the characters—look at how people love Harry Potter, Forrest Gump, or even Jamal of Slumdog Millionaire, which inspite of having a lot multi-layered time frame still managed to have a very solid point of view. I usually hate or even despise films with point of view from all over the place, though there are multi-character films that really requires multi point of view so they are exceptions for there are artistic logic for those. In “Days of Glory” the switching of the point of view from Said at the beginning to Abdulkader at the end is one of the most awesome workaround for the point of views I have ever witnessed. The transfer of this subtle cinematic element is realized through the evolution of a discriminated person—Said, who doesn’t want to dream to a discriminated but hopeful person—Abdulkader, and this evolution is what every single discriminated person needs to undergo.

The film has been really good at least for me in a lot of unbelievable ways that I even want to think that this film is made for my cinematic satisfaction. The struggles that these indigenous soldiers are suffering under the same flag they are fighting for, the discriminating offenses to their part from the native French are narratively smooth and proper. I have never spotted a single one that looks and feels so forced that you would think hyperbole in poetry, mediocrity in drama and soap-operas in popular media join together to describe the scene. The scene in the navy ship hall where Algerian soldiers are not given tomatoes because they are only intended for the native French soldiers has a very light and successful yet serious feel. Abdulkader stand up for his fellow Algerians protesting that they also want tomatoes to their French chief, the motivational mother bedrock is serious and the tomatoes are delightful, the first ranting crowd then cheering crowd excites up the battle of tomatoes creating the first evidence in the film that people no matter what time in this million of years living planet has lived by never really became unvisited by humour. For entertainment, the soldiers are given a chance to see a dance show—a ballet show where almost all of the Algerian soldiers walked out. Abdulkader once again stands up against the French chief regarding about the entertainment they are providing who are only really meant for the European French and not for the Muslims, or Africans who they are. This is when Abdulkader, made a promise for himself and all of his fellow Algerians that they are not going to stop until they receive what the French are supposed to be fighting for—Liberty, Equality, and most of all Fraternity.

Alsace, is an important town. Whoever between France or Germany gets hold of that town gets almost ten times advantage in the war. The 7^th Infantry Battalion settle to go and venture but almost halfway the journey, they are trapped into enemy’s landmines. Now that there are only five of them remaining, Abdulkader leads the three remaining able Algerian soldiers. They made their way bravely to Alsace finding the place deserted and worn out by the previous encounter with few villagers happy about their arrival. All they need to do is to protect and guard that small town until back-up French troop arrives. Days are supposed to pass, and enemies are suppose to get closer and closer until one day, the four Algerian soldiers Abdulkader, Said, Messaoud, and Yassir, has to prove they are not fightingin vain and most importantly for Abdulkader, this is a battle that will declare his leadership more than enough to be recognized even better than what the other promoted French captains have done. Four men with the usual armaments they can carry against the five dozens of enemy with extra and heavy arsenals will only win if Arnold Schwarzenegger or Jackie Chan is Abdulkader, but since they are not, destiny has been kind enough to spare the brave Algerian captain’s life until the French reinforcement come. At the aftermath, with the hundred of French soldiers finally getting hold of Alsace, Abdulkder just walks in anonymity. Very much the opposite of what is supposed to happen as he visualized. This scene of uncertainty, personal and original failure in the midst of military success, is heartbreaking.

Rachid Bouchareb’s film is the most visually stunning war film I have ever seen. The respect for rhythm and passionate editing showed well especially in scenes where bombs and guns and even human meats are exploding. The film is generally quiet; it is not overloaded with music. Sound is also respectable. I do not wish to elaborate on editing and music for I must admit I don’t really know much about it. I wish to comment on its cinematography. The greenish-earthy to melancholic yellow to the dull rocks made stunning with African sun hitting the rough surfaces of rocks all sum up to the equatorial beauty of this heartbreaking yet inspiring story. Every frame is so vividly alive, I didn’t watch it in the best television set in the world or in any high-end movie equipment but I still can tell and feel the life captured in every single scene.

“Days of Glory” is a genuinely excellent film, and I extremely mean that. Despite the fact that it is based on a life story, the story still manages to provide a cinematic narrative. The characters are adorable especially when you recognize that they are not just their individual selves but they are every man and woman who feels the same evolving way throughout the history of mankind. This beautiful reflective realization has been made even more beautiful by its outstanding filmic manipulations by its director and all the other geniuses who worked on this 21^st century masterpiece. This film is an artistry emblazoned in the most powerful of cinema.

 

UNFORGETTABLE, THAT'S WHAT YOU ARE

BALZAC AND THE LITTLE CHINESE SEAMSTRESS
DAI SIJIE
FRANCE

 

Romantic, intellectual, and nostalgic coalesce altogether to come up with this lovable story of two bourgeoisie city boys culturally re-educated in the mountains and have the three year experience resound from them on until they reach the present time with their own streak of successes Ma as a violin player in France and Luo as dentist in one of the most advanced hospital in China. Probably, the most colourful and significant three years in their life, Luo and Ma both fell and even continuously falling in love with, a woman they have only known as the Little Seamstress.

The opening scene of the film introduces us in a breathtaking panoramic landscape of Chinese mountains soothingly escorted by a traditional-sounding song allegorizing their great communist leader Mao Tse-Tung. West versus East, Capitalism versus Communism, Industrialized versus Traditional is the compelling force though not very consciously substantial in the film, provides the fundamental forces in this film. I am a fan of films who try to escalate or deescalate the point of experience of this hegemonic supremacy into the more human, hearty and personal familiarity of real people. The film right from the very beginning starts the tension, though peaceful, of the two entities that is believed to be asymmetrical. There are only two obvious results the premise of this film will be—either traditional will be the proclaimed soul-satisfying way of living than the modern capitalistic lives or the Western ideology winning over the ignorance of the very old life of the mountain people. I mentioned about the “not very consciously substantial” for the lop-sidedness of these two opposing forces, and that is because the characters in the film, Ma, Luo, and the Little Seamstress, don’t seem to have been directly affected by these hegemonies. The development in these characters though is very evident, vital, and even moving. The little seamstress moving to the city to find herself in the world of the advanced and the two re-educated city boys falling in love with her until more than 20 years only happened with the need of a cultural revolution for the Chinese population to submit to Communism with the apparent reason of Western destitution

 

Admirable is the film for its poetic, artistic, and comic treatment. “Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress”  is a celebration of many art forms—photography, music, poetry, and even being referential—films.  To watch this lovely film is to fall in love with art. With the authenticity of the oriental life, the western French wit, the merging creativity of the West and the East, and most impressively the universality of passion for art, the film becomes a love story whose physical and motivational background are as gigantic and as timeless as romance and ideology. 

The film is hugely entertaining. The ignorance of the villagers are not pathetically hilarious instead pure. Especially when the little seamstress is pointing out at the hen at the alarm clock of Ma and Luo and when a villager with his cow on their way home stopped to watch Ma playing the violin, they are sweet and purifying ignorance, not annoying and something that you would wish to keep. The adventures of the two city boys, something that you usually see with Hollywood teen flicks about college jocks and college cheerleaders, are also amusing. In the middle of the forest Ma and Luo, the peeping toms that they are over the so called “real paradise” where native girls take a good bath in the falls reminds you of old good movies that is not foolishly repeating or copying these movies but as it appears to me as something like a sonnet dedicated for these old good movies. This youthfulness even gets more brilliant and dynamic when they decide to steal the western or “forbidden” books that an about-to-graduate-re-educated they call ‘Four-Eyes’ for having eyeglasses owns and even when they create a book grotto, as a private place. The reparation of the chief’s tooth is also a lot of fun. The traditional operation of tooth repair is very interesting and unusual, and it is a genius to present this scene comically. Another awesome feature of the film is that it is well researched and the screenplay has provided the film an exquisite structure that merges tradition and the creation of these fictional characters harmoniously that not a single scene I believe is erroneously placed. The scenes where the boys are retelling the movies they have seen in the town cinema are so simply delighting and those scenes requires us to reminisce the days when movies are semi-god treated. A real celebration of art this film is with those few adorable scenes. Poetry has even extended this celebration when Ma has convinced the doctor to perform an abortion with Little Seamstress in exchange of a French novel. This film is a love story not of people; they are only carriers of the real entities who are constituted by many art forms.

The movie title is also fantastic. Titles are of great essence at least for me because they tell you about anything. Just like a name of a person is, a beautiful person deserves a beautiful name and a good film deserves a good title. “Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress” is the best choice for this sweeping epic romance. Balzac is actually the name of the western author to whom Little Seamstress learns that a woman’s beauty is priceless and emancipated her from the life she used to live to the life she only have known through the books read to her by the two city boys. The movie title represents the two forces, the two worlds I am presenting earlier, to which one leaves the other one and move to the other. The decision of Little Seamstress answers which among the two worlds win—and that is the West. Cured from her ignorance, by the two boys, only means the easy is cured by the west. This is subconsciously a capitalistic film though I would argue that I would like to think of this film as a film made for poetry, photography, music, movies, and most of all, for youthful memories, and the hegemonic battle of communism and capitalism is a distant body, like a moon, too foreign if you are not Neil Armstrong but more or less affected by it. Love is at the centre of the film though and I love this film for being as remote as possible but not so remote from this cold war. It is obvious in the film that capitalism wins over communism but that is just the truth in the real world and I even salute this film for being bittersweet in the last part. The scene where the mountains and the three main characters silhouettes are drowned by the waters are so nostalgic. I do not wish to end with who wins between communism and capitalism but instead I would love to close this review with what Balzac said—a woman’s beauty is priceless. Ma and Luo, many years ago spent the three years of their lives that they would like to experience over and over again. The setting, the beautiful mountains where they met Little Seamstress is about to get drowned because of a huge reservoir project of the Chinese government. Ma and Luo together reminisce the beauty of a priceless experience—of falling in love with Little Seamstress.