Godard might very well have set out to make an anti-war movie with Truffaut's comment that a truly anti-war film was impossible in mind, but even judged solely as an anti-war statement this film's a failure. Why? Well for one thing, Truffaut may have been a genius, but on this score he was certainly wrong. There definitely is a danger of aestheticizing anything you put on film, especially if you do it well (think of just how beautiful Sam Peckinpah can make a massacre), but aestheticizing war doesn't mean you can't successfully make an anti-war film. Think of "The Bridge on the River Kwai," "The Grand Illusion," or the more recent "Downfall." All are fairly conventional war films and none of them exactly make one want to go out and enlist. "The Grand Illusion," and to a lesser extent "Bridge on the River Kwai," paint a romantic picture of war only to undercut it later. You can't help coming away from those films with the message that, while there might be some nobility in war and the ideals that allow men to fight, both war and the ideals that motivate it are a form of madness. "Downfall" is a completely conventional war film, but it never makes war look like anything other than dirty, terrifying and completely insane. And to me this seems exactly the way one should make an anti-war film. Engage in dialogue with those who might find some nobility in war, admit their point, and try to show what's wrong with it while admitting its appeal; or show just how ugly, brutal, dehumanizing, and insane war is with as much realism as you possibly can. "Les Carbiniers" does neither. It's a smug statement aimed at those who already think that all war is wrong and anyone who fights in one degenerate and evil. People in that camp will no doubt find much to agree with, though little to entertain them, but anyone not so convinced will probably just be bored and angry. And who is it one's trying to reach with an anti-war movie anyway? In the end Godard succeeds too well at making an ugly film. Everyone here is either thoroughly nasty, helpless, or silly. It's kind of like Evelyn Waught at his nastiest, only not nearly as funny. In the scene where the captured partisans are shot Godard seems to me to mock the very idea of human dignity. But what is it that makes war so bad? Isn't it that people get killed? If people are as worthless as this film makes out, who really cares if they get killed? Even Waugh didn't' go quite so far; one always found a few noble fools here and there. The movie isn't a total wash. It might not be Waugh, but it is nastily funny here and there, and Godard was a pretty good craftsman when it came to film. Unfortunately, when you get down to it, this might be Godard's most characteristic film. Godard and Truffaut are often linked, but really ther films aren't alike. With Truffaut one always finds sympathy for his characters and there's just a certain warmth and light touch that permeate almost everything he did. One certainly doesn't find that in Godard. Yes there's craft and cleverness here, but also coldness, cynicism, and a failure to understand, or possibly care about, basic human emotion. To me that's what's characteristic of Godard; it's on display even in Godard's "more accessible" (I'd say "better") films like "Band of Outsiders," but nowhere is it clearer than in "Les Carabiniers," which might make it the best Godard film to start with if you really want to get an idea of the man and his work. Truffaut was a humanist in the true sense of the term, whereas Godard, like too many French intellectuals, subscibes to Ivan Karamazov's line: He loves humanity (in the abstract of course) and hates human beings.
Review of The Carabineers
