You Can't Mass-Market Cynicism...

Rating: 9/10 (9 March 2013)

Most hail La Grande Illusion for its overt commentary on class politics and depiction of horizontal/vertical boundaries. The film also has its subtleties - De Boeldieu knows the downsides of both aviation uniforms which is a keen distinction on his part and one that defines bourgeois upbringing. Some would identify such distinguishing as snobbery while it must also be considered as an element of intelligence and foresight. English as a mediator language is another element of foresight as it did prove to become the international language, for all intents and purposes. What is the 'Grand Illusion' then? Is it that to conduct war with rules beguiles the essence of rank inherent to those rules? Is it that the rhetoric of fraternity ignores other roles in the genealogy of social organization? These suppositions would imply a hard Left position within the film. However, the film's direct reference to a grand illusion is that the war would soon end. Renoir posits thus that war is an eternal process because of a dishonesty between internal and external truths. This is best exemplified through the theatre prep scene where the 'awkward' silence hints at something being said internally that would never be admitted to externally. And so the illusion is imagination itself... we are always exercising it but only within a bordered construct of the psyche. Imagination has an infinitely expansive quality but remains 'stuck' within the fixed borders of what is consciously understood (known, accepted, denied and disavowed). De Boeldieu's "What's fair in a war" echoes the greater truth of "what's fair in life". Illusion is a consistent film stylistically - great depth of field, long tracking shots, group dynamics, polyvocal dialogue superseding shot-reverse-shot construction, mobile framing, the long shot. When Gabin's Marechal is put in solitary, there is no significant closeup treatment and no attempt to draw out psychological response or evoke emotions in the spectator - despair of the individual is not entertained by the apparatus. Illusion is a powerful film which highlights that sooner than Renoir being a humanist and ambiguous politically, he is ambiguously humanist and thoroughly apolitical.