I've read a number of takes on here that a strong theme for this and particularly with Denis Levant's Galoup is jealousy, but what I thought I saw as more potent and compelling as a consistent idea here was exploring control.
For men in a military situation control is what it's all about, keeping in control of one's own skill set and physicality, being able to control one's body over a big wall or doing push ups or firing a gun or, of course, of one's emotions. It's control that Galoup wants to see with his men but in himself especially; look how he has to make sure those plates are just so, or how his soldiers are ironing their clothes. A Commandant with so little to actually *do* and without any real battle to fight, and may have some self loathing over his station (that's more on the actor's countenance which I'll get to), it's a bad combination. Beau Travail is most fascinating as a series of poetic-meditative-physical portraits on control, the lack of it, losing it and (by the very end) embracing the loss of it.
It's not always a sit that is easiest to take as a conventional narrative - other reviews behave noted the aspect of this all being like dance than a solid plot, like to my mind even another existential film about the mundanity of military men without any goals like Jarhead is more full of action than this - but it is what kept me engaged, more often than not. There are times where it is more functioning like an experimental film where it's about how bodies and masculinity itself can bend and fold and sweat and do a dozen other things (and yes, hugging is as intensive as crawling on the ground under wires, man that's an amazing beat), though I think my expectation of there being more tension, gay or otherwise, between Galoup and Sentain made me wonder "where is this going, ok there's more male bonding over a fire and grunting and oh birthday cake."
Perhaps it's all one steady stream of masculine harrowing malaise and frustration, of how these bodies tasked to do things like (as if prisoners) breaking rocks in the hot African sun or walking as a brooding pack at night on a road making a car practically go around them, it's all of a piece where you can feel director Claire Denis filming this in a distinctly and demandingly poetic style. It's all about what the camera through visual movement, of these bodies and faces - more so by design the bodies, as I don't think any of them outside of Galoup, Sentain, who is the new guy, and Forestier the man above Galoup and has his own tortured military past (Algeria is name dropped), have names to speak of. Adding to this is the music and sound design which is coarse and abrasive, like the feeling of getting one of the soldier's boots under your chin.
In a way it's a more engrossing film to think about once it ends than to experience in the moment. But that But that brings me back to Levant, who definitely makes this closer to a must see than anything. That's really Denis's masterstroke as a filmmaker is to cast him as he's the kind of performer who almost can't help but be interesting when he's doing very little on camera - or I should say I have to wonder how sparse the screenplay was or if at times Denis gave Levant direction to do something and he took it to a place she wasn't expecting.
Of course when he goes large with his movements he is mesmerizing, but it's also how he can give a glance or a look to someone in his group of legionnaires, or of course Sentain who I wish got a few more lines (I don't even need more of a backstory than what we got, just a little more personality to make Galoup's obsessiveness over him make sense). And once it gets towards the latter part of the film, where this tension is mounting even further for Galoup, Levant can show it through his inaction if that makes sense, how he lays on a bed or holds a gun or drives away in the truck in that desolate wasteland. There's so much in his eyes, in even something out of his control like a throbbing vein, it's wonderful work (and all the more surprising he didn't get time to do prep work due to scheduling issues, according to an interview with Criterion.
Aa for the dancing at the end, I'm sure other writers have spoken more at wiser length than I can, but it does put to a great point what I mentioned earlier about control; he's lost his station in life but now he's free to tear up the friggin dance floor and let go of the control that he's held on to - or maybe opposite that it's held over him. The rigors of masculinity and discipline, of how men are "supposed" to be in some unspoken but totally recognized code of conduct or manners or whatever is on display throughout the film, to a practical fetishistic degree is on display in Beau Travail, and we know it is because Denis contrasts it with the native Djibuti peoples who are more natural and calm and friendly and sensual, and if the ending is extraordinary it's because the filmmakers and Levant earn this explosion of emotional release (or rescue even) from the patriarchal chokehold of control.
So, this is unique and with an absorbing lead performance. If it let me in even a smidgen more emotionally it'd be one of my favorite films of its year.
For men in a military situation control is what it's all about, keeping in control of one's own skill set and physicality, being able to control one's body over a big wall or doing push ups or firing a gun or, of course, of one's emotions. It's control that Galoup wants to see with his men but in himself especially; look how he has to make sure those plates are just so, or how his soldiers are ironing their clothes. A Commandant with so little to actually *do* and without any real battle to fight, and may have some self loathing over his station (that's more on the actor's countenance which I'll get to), it's a bad combination. Beau Travail is most fascinating as a series of poetic-meditative-physical portraits on control, the lack of it, losing it and (by the very end) embracing the loss of it.
It's not always a sit that is easiest to take as a conventional narrative - other reviews behave noted the aspect of this all being like dance than a solid plot, like to my mind even another existential film about the mundanity of military men without any goals like Jarhead is more full of action than this - but it is what kept me engaged, more often than not. There are times where it is more functioning like an experimental film where it's about how bodies and masculinity itself can bend and fold and sweat and do a dozen other things (and yes, hugging is as intensive as crawling on the ground under wires, man that's an amazing beat), though I think my expectation of there being more tension, gay or otherwise, between Galoup and Sentain made me wonder "where is this going, ok there's more male bonding over a fire and grunting and oh birthday cake."
Perhaps it's all one steady stream of masculine harrowing malaise and frustration, of how these bodies tasked to do things like (as if prisoners) breaking rocks in the hot African sun or walking as a brooding pack at night on a road making a car practically go around them, it's all of a piece where you can feel director Claire Denis filming this in a distinctly and demandingly poetic style. It's all about what the camera through visual movement, of these bodies and faces - more so by design the bodies, as I don't think any of them outside of Galoup, Sentain, who is the new guy, and Forestier the man above Galoup and has his own tortured military past (Algeria is name dropped), have names to speak of. Adding to this is the music and sound design which is coarse and abrasive, like the feeling of getting one of the soldier's boots under your chin.
In a way it's a more engrossing film to think about once it ends than to experience in the moment. But that But that brings me back to Levant, who definitely makes this closer to a must see than anything. That's really Denis's masterstroke as a filmmaker is to cast him as he's the kind of performer who almost can't help but be interesting when he's doing very little on camera - or I should say I have to wonder how sparse the screenplay was or if at times Denis gave Levant direction to do something and he took it to a place she wasn't expecting.
Of course when he goes large with his movements he is mesmerizing, but it's also how he can give a glance or a look to someone in his group of legionnaires, or of course Sentain who I wish got a few more lines (I don't even need more of a backstory than what we got, just a little more personality to make Galoup's obsessiveness over him make sense). And once it gets towards the latter part of the film, where this tension is mounting even further for Galoup, Levant can show it through his inaction if that makes sense, how he lays on a bed or holds a gun or drives away in the truck in that desolate wasteland. There's so much in his eyes, in even something out of his control like a throbbing vein, it's wonderful work (and all the more surprising he didn't get time to do prep work due to scheduling issues, according to an interview with Criterion.
Aa for the dancing at the end, I'm sure other writers have spoken more at wiser length than I can, but it does put to a great point what I mentioned earlier about control; he's lost his station in life but now he's free to tear up the friggin dance floor and let go of the control that he's held on to - or maybe opposite that it's held over him. The rigors of masculinity and discipline, of how men are "supposed" to be in some unspoken but totally recognized code of conduct or manners or whatever is on display throughout the film, to a practical fetishistic degree is on display in Beau Travail, and we know it is because Denis contrasts it with the native Djibuti peoples who are more natural and calm and friendly and sensual, and if the ending is extraordinary it's because the filmmakers and Levant earn this explosion of emotional release (or rescue even) from the patriarchal chokehold of control.
So, this is unique and with an absorbing lead performance. If it let me in even a smidgen more emotionally it'd be one of my favorite films of its year.