"Once upon a time, there were five French soldiers who had gone off to war, because that's the way of the world."
Saw the new Jean-Pierre Jeunet flick A Very Long Engagement. Bloody good stuff. Incredible meditation on the absurdity of war, the death of innocence, and hope.
Conservative estimates say 10 million dead and 20 million wounded from 1914-1918. The call to war was fraught with romantic idealism. "Go to war and be back by Christmas . . ." In the UK 800,000 had enlisted in the first year. By the end of the war almost 1 in 4 from the UK were in the military. But that first year -- what talent, what potential, what loss.
World War I fed the best and the brightest of that lost generation to Molech on the God forsaken plains of Europe. During the Battle of the Somme alone the UK lost 420,000 men, the French 200,000, and the Germans an estimated 500,000. One battle!! For what?
6 miles of land.
The Romantics and Idealists who enlisted in the first year of the war were all dead. Truly a lost generation. Imagine, for example, Hemingway, Paul Tillich, JRR Tolkien, Ford Maddox Ford, TE Lawrence (all vets of WWI) all dead. Now imagine 10 Hemingway's or Tillich's or Tolkiens that could have lived . . . what a loss.
What does the apocalyptic do to the romantic? Using the language of cinema, A Very Long Engagement offers some insight . . .
Jeunet is a magician. His brand of cinema is a vehicle for the whimsical (wander and whimper), the glory of the banal, and the unnatural oddity of evil.
Audrey Tautou's character Mathilde is an enchanting sprite broken by polio. She too believes in magic and hope. Hers is a sorrowful quest grounded in the hope that her love still lives. Along the way we encounter those ravaged and permanently disfigured by the demons of war. Broken but not dim. Twisted but still beautiful. A scandalous beauty in a world gone straight to Hell.
Mathilde plays the Tuba --because it is the only instrument that can mimic a ships distress call. She looks for signs of hope in the peeling of an apple or the arrival of her dog. Anything that a silent God may use to inform her.
Her love, Manech, has gone mad. A victim of being witness to the gates of Hell. Condemned to death for self mutilation (a desperate attempt to go home).
This is a story of the Apocalyptic and the Romantic . . . we find innocence and sentimentality ravaged, confusion, and insanity in the real. But, there is also a fools hope in the midst of loss, poetry in the simplicity of the everyday, and new life in death.
Giordano Bruno said, "Heroic love is the property of those superior natures who are called insane (insano) not because they do not know (no sanno), but because they over-know (soprasanno)."
The apocalyptic drives the romantic to insanity . . . and it's a good thing too!
Stay tuned for Pt.2: The Insane Christ!
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