A disturbing and thought provoking masterpiece

Rating: 8/10 (15 July 2004)

This film has an "epic" reputation but you should not for a moment imagine that you will be treated to film-making on an epic scale. This is as intimate as any film about warfare is ever able to get.The focus is on guerilla warfare and its practitioners. There are is no glory or machismo involved, these are authentically frightened people driven from political protest to suicide tactics.Rather than being able to confront the enemy face on the N.L.F. spend most of their time hiding in disused buildings, using children as bomb-runners, and fleeing from soldiers disguised as women. When the occupying French forces are fleshed out they are either insouciant and world weary, as with Jean Martin's Colonel, or simply teenagers on their National service and anxious to get home. The political focus of the film is on the science of revolution; propaganda, counter-propaganda, determinism, etc. Therefore the viewer is not stirred or moved by the film but rather hit with the fact that certain conflicts are irreconcilable and there is nothing to be done about it. In this sense it is one of very few films with a Marxist concious that will ever hope to reach a mass audience. One brief technichal difficulty lies in the excessive use of real outdoor photography bleaches the majority of the screen white, and therefore makes the subtitles at times difficult to read. However it remains one of films most implacably well informed films of conflict.