Fighter [dir. Siddharth Anand]

I realize I'm not in the majority when I say this, but Siddharth Anand's movies leave me cold. This was true right from the time he was making rom-coms/rom-drams (I had the misfortune of watching Bachna Ae Haseeno on a bus trip, a reprehensible exercise which, not just the ladies, everyone should beware of). Anand then shifted to more heavy-duty action with Bang Bang (an official remake of the frenetic Knight and Day). Therein he found his true metier, doing desi takes on the stereotype Hollywood tent-pole action movie. He then churned out the exponentially more bombastic War (which I found enjoyable in its embracing of the ludicrous) and Pathaan. The latter was his biggest commercial success, but for me it was a mostly lifeless experience, not even fun in the illogical masala vein. Pathaan was so concerned with being 'hip' I could not give a fuck about anything that happened onscreen (perhaps I was more concerned with the increasing numbness in my butt and brain).

With Fighter, Anand continues his run of feature-length action-VFX showreels, angling for a job on the next Mission Impossible or Top Gun or at least Fast & Furious installment. The film is set in the world of combat pilots hand-picked as an elite team for strike/rescue missions. After 2019's Uri: The Surgical Strike, rah-rah war movies reflecting the 'New India, Aggressive India' image became cool. With titles like Gunjan Saxena, they also became (preachy) vehicles of female empowerment. Fighter collects these trends into a single package - the Hrithik-worship from War continues in an almost identical adoring coverage of bronzed biceps and gold-flecked hair, Balakot and Pulwama are referenced in the cartoonish portrayal of counter maneuvers, and Deepika Padukone's chopper pilot could be an extension of the Gunjan Saxena character.

Fighter fills the frame with a sizable cast and lip-service is paid to 'team bonding', but make no mistake, this is not an ensemble piece. The characters that are not matinee names have no backstory or hook to make them interesting. They're just there, 'reflectors' to bounce more light on the leads. The audience is never given any reason to care for their fate. One character is the token Muslim card that becomes a martyr; his funeral rituals are completely drowned out by a Vande Mataram cover. Even the manner in which characters seem to have carte blanche to enter control centers for ops they are not part of, or just hang around for emotional detours in the middle of setting up covert missions takes away from the immersion.

The movie expects us to feel bad for Hrithik when he is called out for going cowboy and endangering his squad by abandoning team goals in pursuit of individual targets. Curiously, none of his team-mates have an issue with his lone wolf attitude. The calling out is done by his commanding officer Anil Kapoor, who yells out every sentence like an unruly society chairman uncle bawling at the cricket playing kids damaging his window panes. There would be some logic to this narrative if it culminated in Hrithik's becoming more mindful of following orders, which I assume is what the armed forces want of soldiers. But for some reason this PTSD afflicted bloke's self-obsession becomes a virtue.

The action is slick, I'll grant, but it feels rehashed and unexciting - the exhaust pipes shimmering at launch, the jets blowing snow off the trees or spray off the water surface as they zoom by, the loop-de-loop maneuver, we've seen all this before. It's more like Anand studied scenes from Top Gun to showcase his ability to replicate them indigenously at lower cost. Some of the green screen work is less than stellar (when Hrithik and the villain - a Fabio clone with one bloodshot eye to signal his villainy - are slugging it out atop a careening jeep). The film is set in Jammu & Kashmir, but you get Mediterranean beachside and ultrahip-nightclub song sequences that are awkwardly horned in. For tonal consistency, this Fighter is a damp squib.

One of Our Aircraft is Missing [dirs. Powell and Pressburger]

While not the first collaboration between the great team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, One of Our Aircraft is Missing (OOOAIM) was the first official production of their brainchild The Archers, in which they took a joint writer-producer-director credit. So it is an important element of film history. Lucky then it's an entertaining film too, especially interesting to fans of old-school war dramas (of course, OOOAIM wouldn't have been old-school but quite cutting edge in 1942 when it was released).

The film deals with a British bombing mission over Stuttgart that goes awry when the plane is hit by retaliatory fire and the 6-man crew are forced to bail out in their parachutes. They drift into a neighboring region of The Netherlands. The danger is far from over because this is still Nazi-occupied territory. They must rely on the patriotism of the native Dutch people and their resentment of the Nazi invaders to reach back home. The rest of the film is an episodic narrative where they are passed from one group of locals to another, all coming together to aid the Brits who they hope will ultimately help in eliminating the Nazi tyranny. It is a little piecemeal but the brisk pacing does not leave much time to reflect.

The focus of the screenplay is less on military heroics and more on solidarity between people against Nazi oppression, and cooperation for a common cause. Although OOOAIM primarily deals with the all-male British bomber crew, Michael Powell influenced Pressburger to write strong female parts, and so among the Dutch locals they meet some fierce women who are instrumental in arranging for the help they need; my favorite was Googie Withers' portrayal of the no-nonsense Joe de Vries who fools the Nazis into believing that she is friendly to them, all the while sheltering and aiding stranded allied forces. Powell's. autobiography claims that Googie, who had Dutch roots, was so overcome at being offered the part she broke down.

Technically too, the film is a marvel. Apart from exciting footage of actual planes obtained with help from the British armed forces, art director David Rawnsley designed massive floor-spanning miniatures of the Stuttgart landscape to depict the bombing run. Ronald Neame's cinematography is evocative and the film is skillfully edited by a young David Lean (just prior to his directorial debut with In Which We Serve). Powell also decided to avoid any background score and employ only digetic music, which generated a more realistic tone, while also highlighting the emotion when specific music cues like the Dutch national anthem were used. OOOAIM is old-fashioned in terms of its portrayal of war where soldiers could still be shown to be chivalrous and fair-minded, but it does not appear creaky.

Under Fire [dir. Roger Spottiswoode]

While watching Under Fire, Roger Spottiswoode's film about US journalists covering the civil revolution against the regime of the dictatorial president Anastasio Somoza Debayle in Nicaragua, it is hard to not compare it with Oliver Stone's Salvador, which deals with similar territory. Under Fire is the more clean-cut and old-school Hollywood of the two. The journalist characters (Nick Nolte and Joanna Cassidy, with a strong pivotal turn from Gene Hackman) are not jaded by corruption or moral cynicism. They respect their job and believe in its capacity to help good prevail. This of course brings them to a course where they set aside the objectiveness their profession demands, to support the people they see as oppressed underdogs struggling against a vicious establishment willing to use all means at its disposal to crush the rebellion.

Of course, the film does hint at the hand of the US government in propping up the Somoza government till the shocking killing of an American journalist by his soldiers led to a public outcry that reversed their stand. In one scene a native character bitingly talks about how the deaths of thousands of Nicaraguans mattered less than the death of a single American in directing the world's eyes towards the oppression their people faced every day. But I found Under Fire a little less effective as a picture of the political and moral chaos that occurs in a civil war than Salvador was; even though the latter was sometimes more scattershot, it better conveyed this aspect.

Reviews of Under Fire have also brought up comparisons with Casablanca, a film of romance in a time of strife. There is a love triangle between Hackman and Cassidy who have just separated as a couple, and Nolte, who is Hackman's best friend and in love with Cassidy. It's handled with good taste: In one beautiful ly understated scene Hackman comes across intimate pictures of his wife taken by Nolte, which obviously cause him some heartache from leftover feelings, but he takes the thing in stride, knowing that what is past will not return.

Under Fire is a fine prestige picture with good writing and fine lead performances (also worthy of mention are Jean-Louis Trintignant as a charming if chameleonic power-broker and a young Ed Harris as an American mercenary). Cinematographer John Alcott evokes a strong naturalistic style, and there are some stunning open set-pieces with Mexico standing in for Nicaragua. Jerry Goldsmith's score I am ambivalent about: it's a remarkable adventure film score, but to me it undermines the starkness of the events behind the story.

Uri - The Surgical Strike [dir. Aditya Dhar]

Indian cinema's history of military films has been spotty. Unlike Hollywood's close ties with the US armed forces allowing the studios access to military equipment and manpower, relevant technical information and other resources, in return for a positive heroic showcase to the public of the actions of these forces (and cushy consultant positions with showbiz exposure for current and former military personnel), there are at most a handful of such collaborations out here. Then there is the matter of wedding a battlefield story to the stereotype ingredient-based melodrama structure of mainstream Indian films down the ages. Pushing aside the ones where the protagonist being a soldier is just a throwaway backdrop detail for a standard Bollywood product, it is hardly a surprise that we have very few military action focused movies (and only a subset of those have reflected contemporary / near contemporary events). Chetan Anand's Haqeeqat (1964) inspired by the Sino-Indian war of 1962, would appear to have established the paradigm subsequent desi battlefield narratives styled themselves upon. In the more recent past JP Dutta contributed to the Indian war movie genre with Border (1997), LoC Kargil (2003) and Paltan (2018). But these films in order offered steeply diminishing returns, on account of shamelessly rehashed story and character beats, and reduced quality of execution. Almost the only Indian film that seriously explores the soldier's psyche and his place in society is actor-director Nana Patekar's 1991 film Prahaar (and even that eschews the military backdrop in its second half).

Which is not to say that Aditya Dhar's ambitious debut film, based on the covert military ops carried out by Indian armed forces in enemy territory defies convention. Here again you have the heroic Indian soldier, who having faced tragedy from terrorism / foreign aggression, goes on a mission of national (and to some extent personal) vendetta to tell the enemy that their actions will, following Newton's Third Law, cause equal and opposite reactions. Critic Baradwaj Rangan's review has even likened it in outline to 80's Bollywood gratuitous revenge dramas like Hukumat (1987). But there is a focus and visceral propulsion in Uri's execution that invigorates the genre for Indian cinema. In few and bold strokes the film introduces its small cast of main characters and sets up the central conflict, the attack on the army camp at Uri in Kashmir by four insurgents who ended up murdering 21 soldiers before they were felled. The tragic blow to the armed forces and the nation at large is supplemented by a sense of personal loss when our protagonist covert ops specialist Major Vihaan (Vicky Kaushal) loses his brother-in-law to that massacre. Vihaan, who had by then shifted to a desk job to care for his ailing mother (a dignified if prop-like Swaroop Sampat), asks to be reinstated to field operations in the retaliation planned by the Indian army.

The entire second half of the film is devoted to the mechanics of planning and execution of the retaliation through "surgical strikes" hitting terrorist training camps in enemy territory - reconnaissance of enemy locations, gathering information through spies and from captured hostiles, detailing of operation parameters and preparation of the people involved in the actual op. Unlike an all-out war with rank-and-file soldiers, the surgical strikes employed a select band of elite warriors armed with rigorous training and technological aid. Modern combat rifles, night-vision goggles, binoculars with face recognition tech, body-mounted cameras, surveillance drones - as much as anything else, the film serves as a showcase for the sophistication and technical competence of the Indian armed forces as a world-class fighting force. The visual slickness is complimented by the laser-sighted focus of the script - there's no time wasted on throwaway romances (none of the women in the film are love interests), cloying religious integration (Vihaan passes by a group of his team members offering namaz but no big deal is made of it),  no one makes big speeches and the patriotism is not expressed through bovine-tempered never-ending ballads. The film revels in a spirit of (positive-minded) aggressive nationalism. At the same time, it is careful not to espouse a tasteless political bias. The characters standing in for real-life politicians are shown to be supportive of military decisions, but not directing them; Rajit Kapur may be made up like Narendra Modi but he behaves with a restraint lacking in the real McCoy.

There are of course the usual exaggerations and fabrications of any mainstream film. A bird-shaped drone used for overhead spying is shown to be the brainchild of a college intern at the DRDO (even if it was, wouldn't the army just ask the kid to write down the instructions instead of depending on him to take part in actual espionage ops?). The enemy is depicted as an indolent moron - Pak military council members shown to be more interested in golf and yakhni pulao than studying India's response to their activities, none of the militant camps have watch towers or night sentries - and the Indian soldiers have almost no worthwhile challenge in carrying out the mission (you're making stuff up anyway, why not invent things that add more tension in the narrative?). But as part of the new breed of Bollywood cinema, Uri-TSS is commendable. Some years ago, such a vehicle would have been unthinkable without a big star name attached and all the baggage that comes with that. Vicky Kaushal is not the first name that comes up when you think action hero, but he turned out to be the perfect choice. He invests himself physically and mentally into the character of Major Vihaan, and infuses him with a controlled exterior and an inner fire (how you wish some of this attitude had shown in his Raazi character). When he gets his slow-motion walk towards the end of the film, you feel he has earned it. The supporting actors (Paresh Rawal, Mohit Raina, Kirti Kulhari, Yami Gautam) may not sport well-rounded characterizations but they have defined roles and are not just props to accentuate the protagonist. Unlike other Indian military and patriotic films, Uri refrains from endless brandishing of the national flag / anthem, seeking instead to interest Generation Now in how cool and exciting an armed forces life can be for those that can handle the pressure...and yes, being terrific popcorn entertainment for the rest of us.

The Dam Busters [dir. Michael Anderson]

In an interesting coincidence the last film I saw also dealt with historic events during WW2. This time I'm talking about the 1955 war movie The Dam Busters. Quite a good one, it reminded me of David Lean's In Which We Serve (and I learned from the retrospective making of that the director Michael Anderson had assisted Lean on that film). It's a story of quintessential British valor and scientific thinking used to score a tactical victory in 1942 on the Germans by destroying some major dams adjoining their factories and thereby crippling their armament manufacturing capacity. Of course, from the other side, one might think a lot of German factory workers probably died or were rendered homeless in the deluge, but then war as a wholly ethical "soldiers only" enterprise probably never existed.

Based on the actual events of Operation Chastise, the film begins with scientist / engineer Barnes Wallis (Michael Redgrave) coming up with the concept of a "bouncing bomb" when dropped from an aircraft in a precise manner would skim over the water (like pitching stones across a pond) and finally slide down next to the dam wall, the consequent explosion causing greater damage than an attempt to directly hit the wall from above. Wallis stakes his reputation on the plan, even resigning from his position before the war administration allots him the necessary facility to scale up and test his idea. The plan involves using a series of air sorties that will repeatedly bounce bombs till the structure breaks, so you have a special squadron of experienced pilots assembled under Guy Gibson (Richard Todd, who was himself a decorated serviceman in the war), who run a series of test missions. There are failures and setbacks till the idea is perfected, barely before it is time for the actual execution (in mid-May, when the tide was highest and the damage from the dam bust expected to be the most).

The film had the support of the British armed forces and Anderson paid a lot of attention to technical detail and authenticity, and thus the scenes of preparation and aerial attack are both credible and thrilling. It also helps that the British war film shows the operation as disciplined team-work and stiff upper lip, and less of swaggering war heroics (apparently Howard Hawks had proposed a script which he sent across to Barnes and others for inputs but they were offended by its tone and did not revert to him). The only niggle is the weak optical effects used to show flak and gunfire in the scenes where the sorties battle German defenses to reach their targets. Against the other elements they look very out of place, although I don't know what they could have done to alleviate it given the budget and technology at their disposal.

OK, just a heads-up in case anyone else goes in to this one blind. There was a language warning before the film opened and disclaimers about prevailing culture, and I didn't realize what it was about till the character of Guy Gibson called out for his dog with the N-word. It is a bit of a shock and one wonders how the Peter Jackson remake that was floated at one point would have addressed it (oh wait, here) but it's historical fact and no way to retrospectively take it out without seriously mutilating the picture.

Tora! Tora! Tora! [dirs. Richard Fleischer - Toshio Masuda - Kinji Fukasaku]

Over the weekend I watched in its extended Japanese cut the 1970 war movie Tora! Tora! Tora! (TTT), which covers the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese military and documents the events leading up to this audacious attack which roused the US into becoming a major participant in the Second World War.

The key element powering all the decisions about the making of TTT was its meticulous attention to historical detail and authenticity. Thus we are privy to the backroom discussions among the military and the politicians, the cat and mouse game played between the US and Japan. While the US (or at least Congress) was still undecided about taking an active role in WW2, the major bone of contention for Japan was the US opposition to its invasion of China, which led to trade sanctions blocking their access to war resources. While ostensibly continuing negotiations Japan surreptitiously organized a full scale guerilla air attack (planned by Commander-in-Chief Isoroku Yamamoto) on the US military base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Although American military had vague rumblings about Japan's plans, a combination of indefinite knowledge and their own complacency led to their being wholly unprepared on that fateful Sunday of December 7, 1941, when Japanese fighters launched off carrier ships positioned nearby, and in two waves managed to damage several US carrier ships and destroy a large portion of parked military planes. More than 2000 men were killed and a thousand more seriously injured in the attack which was made before Japan had formally declared war with the US.

The film was a prestige project for 20th Century Fox, who were looking to replicate the enormous success of their Normandy invasion film The Longest Day. It was planned as a US-Japanese collaboration with film-makers from each nation telling the story from their viewpoint. Versatile journeyman Richard Fleischer directed the American portion of the story making use of a respected American ensemble cast including Martin Balsam, EG Marshall, and Joseph Cotten. Akira Kurosawa's name was attached to the Japanese side of the project and he worked the script with his regular screenwriter team, but a couple of weeks into filming he either quit or was let off because of his disinclination to work in tandem with the American studio. Then Toshio Masuda and Kinji Fukasaku were brought in to complete the work. The Japanese cast included Kurosawa regulars Eijiro Tono and Susumu Fujita.

The film is excellent as a visual classroom lesson telling us about the event and what led up to it, but it is dramatically quite flat, mainly because the people we see till the events of the actual attack are not caught up in it, and so there is no dramatic tension. There are lots of facts here but very little feeling. The film seems overly cautious not to make any individual appear as a villain or a blunderer (most notably its sympathetic treatment of US Commander-in-Chief Husband Kimmel, who was demoted after the debacle). Also it is quite obvious that the characters are more puppets to dole out information than 3-dimensional people (Within this limitation, the Japanese segments are better directed and carry more emotional impact, possibly because the Japanese side has a more defined purpose). The last 20 odd min are devoted to showing the actual assault, which is fairly thrilling, with some very dangerous moments captured on film. On the whole, while not as emotionally gripping as some of the classic British war films which follow a similar template, this is much preferable to the 2001 Michael Bay directed Pearl Harbor, which made a trite romance the center-piece of a deafeningly loud and pedestrian film. Probably as a function of which country regarded the attack as memorable, TTT was not well-received in America but a major success in Japan.

In Which We Serve [dirs. Noel Coward & David Lean]

It makes for an interesting comparison, this film and the one I posted about before, The Life & Death of Colonel Blimp. Both are British films concerning the Second World War, and made during that period. In Which We Serve (1942), released a year earlier, was the golden child, showered with a large expense account and all manner of advise and logistical support from the British armed forces. The reason is easy to see, it's plainly a propaganda film, one that exclusively celebrates the chivalry, selflessness and gentlemanly spirit of the British forces fighting the war, and the brave front put up by their loved ones back home. The enemy is always seen from a distance, a nameless warship or attack plane; for all this film cares, they might have been piloted by robots wearing horned Hitler masks. Where Col. Blimp differs is in giving a face to the enemy, suggesting that they too are honorable and courageous soldiers, and in implying that the days of battles being conducted as by-the-rules games of cricket are over. For this, the makers were strongly "advised" by the script-censors not to make the film, and denied all forms of official support. Winston Churchill himself did his damnedest to block its release. It was only several decades later, thanks to the efforts of cinema champions like Martin Scorsese, that the world got to see the intended version of Powell and Pressburger's wartime classic.

Anyway, we're talking here about In Which We Serve. While it is a propaganda film, that doesn't by any means make it a bad one. It was the brain-child of the versatile and immensely successful artist Noel Coward. Coward was a patriot and wanted desperately to do something to aid the British effort in the War. When the producers came to him with the offer of funding any script he had in mind for a movie, the normally film-averse Coward translated into an engaging screenplay the wartime experience of his friend Lord Louis Mountbatten, who captained the destroyer ship HMS Kelly before it was sunk by the Germans. The lead character, played by Coward himself (and rather well, exuding the requisite quiet authority), is based on Mountbatten (and Coward wore Mountbatten's cap for many scenes), although modified to avoid direct comparison on the man's request. Coward's search for someone to "help him with the technical side of things" led to his discovery through a mutual acquaintance of David Lean, then an editor. Lean accepted the job on condition that he share directing credits with Coward.

What is therefore most remarkable about In Which We Serve is that it is the feature film debut of both Coward and Lean. To start your film career on a large budget war epic with massive logistical challenges could not have been easy, but the final product looks remarkably assured. The film starts with the sinking of the destroyer HMS Torrin (a fictional stand-in for the Kelly), helmed by Capt. Kinross (Noel Coward). The surviving crew huddle around an inflatable raft, and as we focus on each of them, we enter a flashback that looks at their life, their relationships with their military colleagues and their family members. It's a somewhat clumsy structure, but allows for a variety of experiences as we get an inside view into a cross-section of characters from the clipped-tongued captain to the East End sailor. Uniformly, they focus on presenting a charming warm-hearted picture of regular patriots, with loving supportive families, so it's not as realistic (or cynical, if you so regard) as the war films of successive decades would be, but it does its job as a rouser of public feeling in a skillful and sincere manner. Especially touching is the depiction of the families. The characterization is simple but there is nuance in the evoking of social strata and in the performances. Easily the best of these is Celia Johnson as Mrs. Kinross, who belies her cinematic debut with a well-anchored performance, exemplified in the lovely single-take scene where she extemporizes on her feelings towards the "rival" of all naval wives, their spouses' ships.

On the technical side, Ronald Neame, a regular DoP on the Coward-Lean partnerships, does a sterling job of capturing the vision of the directors. The lensing is not flashy, but solid and effective, with great contrast. The scenes of on-ship battle look quite convincing in comparison to other films of a similar period. On the whole this is a very well accomplished rah-rah patriotic film that manages to rouse without appearing fake or grating.

Criterion's blu-ray of this film, part of a set of Coward-Lean films, gives an excellent visual presentation, showcasing deep contrast and fine detail. The mono sound is limited by its source, but clear and free of distortions. A fair number of extras, including a Coward biographer talking about the film and a making-of documentary with interviews from several sources, including Ronald Neame.

Life and Death of Colonel Blimp [dirs. Powell and Pressburger]

I doubt there's any film made by the duo of Powell & Pressburger that's not at the least very interesting, and Blimp stands among the top of their varied and illustrious filmography. The film is about the old world transitioning into an uneasy new world. The old is represented by Col Blimp (Roger Livesey, marvelous performance) who personifies a Boy Scout fantasy of a soldier that believes in chivalry and fair play on the battleground. Following his career from an honored young officer of the Boer War through the First World War and culminating at the onset of the Second, the film shows how the world around Blimp changes irretrievably from his gentleman's cricket game approach to conflict, to a more sordid "the end justifies the means" approach. While showing the lead character with warmth and admiration (humanizing him mainly through his continued adoration of his first love - played by Deborah Kerr who also plays two other characters in Blimp's life that resemble her), the film also acknowledges that he is a relic in this changing time. It's a touching richly-textured film, if you hold a torch for the old-school values that Blimp stands for. Rarely have 163 min gone by so breezily, with every moment given to economical exposition or solid character development. Many major events of Blimp's life take place offscreen with the film focusing more on the effects of those events on his life. Like many other P&P films, this one is also marvelously designed and executed with panache. The Technicolor photography (Georges Perinal, with Geoffrey Unsworth and Jack Cardiff as camera operators) is breath-taking, and the sentimental music score genuinely moving in conjunction with the visuals.

Criterion's blu-ray gives a wonderful presentation of the film. Based on a restoration conducted by Martin Scorsese's Film Foundation, the image here looks even better than on their other P&P technicolor film Black Narcissus. Apart from scanning of the negatives (which for technicolor means 3 sets of negatives), the restoration has been carried out almost entirely in the digital realm, and the results are astonishing - there is warmth and beauty here. While our eyes are so accustomed to seeing grain in movies that it would still be nice to shoot on film, it is my personal belief that screen size and resolution apart, a good digital screening would have little significant difference from a good 35mm print, and any moaning about this is just *blind* prejudice. The mono sound is clear and rich taking into account the limitations of the period. There's a load of supplements, of which I have seen only the rather nice intro by Scorsese in which he talks about the film and how it influenced crucial scenes in Raging Bull.

La Grande Illusion [dir. Jean Renoir]

Last night I saw La Grande Illusion. This is a 1937 movie about French soldiers captured by the Germans during WW1. There are several occasions in which the French soldiers try to escape their prisons, the ideas for which were later taken for several "escape" films. But this is not purely an escape movie. The film casts an observant eye on the class differences between the soldiers (especially between the noble-born officers and working-class soldiers) and how these differences are to them greater than the differences in nationality or religion. The movie does not explicitly show the cruelties of war, and the interaction between the prisoners and their German soldiers is generally of a chummy nature or at least showing mutual respect (most striking here is the cameraderie between Pierre Fresnay as the highborn French officer de Boeldieu and Erich Von Stronheim as the aristocratic German captain von Rauffenstein). Rather, it depicts the futility of war by showing how the people involved in fighting these wars do not have any inherent hatred or ill feeling towards each other, and it is the arbitrariness of those in power that pulls them into conflict. While La Grande Illusion is on the sentimental side, it is not preachy. There is a cautiously optimistic message that at the end of the war, people will once again learn to live with each other. Of course, this hope was undone 4 years after the film was released with the advent of WW2.
La Grande Illusion was banned in Germany and Italy (of course), but was a major success wherever else it was released. Audiences identified with the essential decency of the characters and the anti-war sentiment. A cross-border love story that blossoms towards the end of the film is especially poignant. I would really like to see India make a war-time film like this instead of just the ones that go rah rah patriotism.

Studio Canal's blu-ray of La Grande Illusion features an impeccable presentation. Unlike the previous Criterion DVD release which from screenshots now appears digitally sharpened and cropped on all sides, this BD uses a newer 4K restoration sourced from the nitrate negative and the image is simply stunning. Terrific depth, deep (but not boosted) blacks and such minimal grain that one could almost suspect noise reduction if not for the terrific detail. There are occasionally soft scenes but none that seem a by-product of digital manipulation. The French audio track (DTS-HD MA 2.0) is clear and does the job, though as expected for a movie of this vintage, not especially immersive and the highs in the background score jar a teensy weensy bit for me. There's a boat load of extras which promise to be interesting, but I have not seen any other than the (very nice) lengthy video introduction/essay by French movie critic Ginette Vincendeau (who seems to be the go-to person for video essays on Arrow and Studio Canal releases of French movies).

Atonement [dir. Joe Wright]

Atonement gives off the flavor of a film based on a Booker-prize winner; post watch wiki-ing reveals that the novel (Ian McEwan) was shortlisted for the same. The Bookers like to follow a pattern, don't they? Anyhow this is a very decent film. The atonement in this story is attempted by Briony who as a young girl on the cusp of World War II commits a breach of honesty that spirals out into turmoil for her elder sister Cecilia and Cee's lover Robbie. You see, Briony wrongly accuses Robbie of being a molester and the consequences are devastating for all concerned. Cecilia and Robbie are condemned to a lifetime of austerity and waiting, while Briony is left to reflect on the implications of her action.

The chain of events is narrated in an interesting slightly non-linear manner; typically this consists of seeing an event from Briony's perspective, then returning to the scene with a more holistic view. I assume this style would have its roots in the source novel, but I have yet to verify this. Atonement is set in Britain of the late 30's and 40's where people are still being “propah” and dressing dandyishly for tea. Even little actions heighten the sense of fettered sexuality, an aspect most beautifully exploited here. Yes, things are more overt here, with Cecilia stripping to her underclothing to dive into the family pond or having an impromptu bonk in the library, but even the holding of hands and the exchange of yearning looks carries greater significance than it would in a contemporary film.

It doesn't hurt as Kiera Knightley plays Cecilia with the same pixie-like allure that Helena Bonham-Carter once brought to her roles in the period films of Merchant-Ivory and others, and unlike the silly business in those overrated Pirates of the Caribbean films, she flourishes both presence and talent here. James McAvoy as Robbie is entirely believable as he goes from fresh-faced lover to shattered wreck, without the film going too far into melodramatic dreck territory. Like I said, the feel is that of a Booker book, a good thing in this case. Sherlock Holmes fans will get a kick out of seeing his newest player Benedict Cumberbatch in a small but effective turn as a complete cad. The photography (Seamus McGarvey) is rich in a picture postcard-vein, going from stately English mansions to the battle-scarred beaches of France, even throwing in some suspiciously leery glances at war wounds.

If there is a criticism to Atonement, once could say the flow of events in the script seems “constructed” rather than growing organically. But that is really more of a design decision for the film (and the book, possibly), and should not be a deal-breaker for people interested in seeing what is on the whole a good solid romance story.