Glorious Achievement: A Review of Indigénes

Wow. You know, how, sometimes, you go to the movies expecting to be underwhelmed and you're just blown away? That's what happened when I checked out OSCAR foreign film nominee Days of Glory, aka Indigénes.

Directed by Rachid Bouchareb, this Algerian World War II flick, has the emotional punch of the entire 10 episode run of HBO's amazing Band of Brothers series, but synthesized into a two hour movie. Like BoB and Jean Renoir's Grand Illusion, Days of Glory is bereft of jingoism and heroic cliché. It's directed with such restraint and sensitivity (but never sentimentality) that I was tricked, at times, into thinking I was watching a smaller picture, rather than such an emotionally (and cinematically) grand one. The performances, each an original, distinctive take on a familiar archetype, are so natural that the actors scored half their points with me for what they didn't do.

The story follows a brigade of Algerian troops eager to defend their Motherland (France, their conqueror) for a number of varied reasons—money, hope French respect/citizenship, or, in one case, out of boredom, desperation and poverty. The focal characters are: two brothers, older Yassir (Samy Naceri) and younger Larbi (Assaad Bouab), Abdelkader (Sami Bouajila), a natural born leader and intellectual, Said (Jamel Debbouze) a naïve mama's boy with a simple mind and a softer heart and Massauoud (Roschdy Zem) a homely romantic with aspirations of assimilation into white French society. All are under often cruel, rarely compassionate eye of a lighter-skinned French sergeant, (Bernard Blancan).

From scene to scene, the inevitability of each man's death becomes increasing tangible, while, inversely, their hopes and dreams become more remote. Compounding the tragedy, Bouchareb directs the entire movie in a matter-of-fact natural style, without any obscene gore or in-your-face “this is war, man!” close-ups. It's this easy distance that further dramatizes the Algerians' helplessness. The dénouement, a showdown with a German company of troops in Alsace, on the Eastern Border of France marks an ominous homecoming for the surviving men. They're in the Motherland, alright, but they won't be allowed to stay very long, no matter how strong their convictions, brave their hearts or deep their love for France.

Sun-Yi Park - www.myspace.com/koreanfilmfan