Capitaine Conan (1996)
Directed by Bertrand Tavernier

Film Review

Capitaine Conan is one war film that everyone should be compelled to watch.  With its unapologetically graphic portrayal of the horrors and injustices of war, it does not make for the most comfortable of viewing experiences, but what makes it invaluable is its uncompromising insights into the less visible harm of warfare - its impact on the psychology of those who participate in it.  The film is based on a novel of the same title by Roger Vercel which was controversial in its time but received France's highest literary award, the Prix Goncourt, in 1934.  Drawing on his own stark memories as a stretcher-bearer in WWI, Vercel takes us beyond the merely physical devastation wrought by warfare and exposes something just as horrific, the extent to which the human psyche can be totally and irreversibly warped by the experience of armed combat, and the moral implications that then arise.  In his film adaptation, Bertrand Tavernier drives home the central message of Vercel's novel with extraordinary eloquence and power.  Having transformed its citizens into conscienceless killers to fight its wars, a nation has a moral duty not only re-civilise its warriors once the hostilities have ended but also to take responsibility for those acts of atrocity carried out by battle-hardened soldiers in their 'moments of madness'.  As recent events have shown in the war in Afghanistan, Vercel's novel and Tavernier's film still have a resonance, and a lesson to teach us all.

Capitaine Conan continues and extends the carefully reasoned anti-war sentiment that Tavernier expressed so pointedly in his previous films La Vie et rien d'autre (1989) and  La Guerre sans nom (1992).  It is not the physical damage of war that appears to offend Tavernier most, but rather the hypocrisy, the injustice and the less visible consequences of war that can be just as destructive.  Capitaine Conan begins with one of the most viscerally shocking sequences of any war film, action scenes that look more like something out of the Middle Ages than the 20th century.  There is nothing heroic in Tavernier's depiction of war.  It is merely ugly, senseless carnage, waged by things that are scarcely recognisable as human beings as they slice each other up in the heat of battle.  When this spectacle of gore and ferocity is abruptly curtailed it is quite a shock and, bizarrely, we find ourselves on the side of the trigger-happy killers and cut-throats who are at a loose end once the fighting is suspended, psychotic killing machines waiting to re-programmed.

The sense of injustice which Vercel conveys so powerfully in his novel is palpably rendered in the film's languorous middle section.  Within a matter of days of being feted as a hero of the Republic, Conan soon finds himself being treated by French military justice as a dangerous criminal.  The only person who appears capable of seeing things from his perspective is a sensitive young academic, Norbert; to the rule-bound establishment, he is an embarrassment and a threat to be eliminated.  Conan in fact comes to symbolise the fundamental injustice of war, the man-turned-warrior who, once he has done his job, is no longer fit for purpose in any civilised society.  When we see what Conan becomes at the end of the film, a vague shadow of his former self, the revulsion we feel is almost unbearable.  If the soldier had been hacked to pieces amid the frenzy of battle, that would have been more tolerable, a far more fitting end.  To see him reduced to a dry husk of a man, his purpose and vitality completely extinguished, that is a far greater tragedy.

Thanks to its intelligent screenplay, compelling performances from a top notch cast and some superb handheld camerawork Capitaine Conan is a cinematic tour de force that stands as one of the high points of 1990s French cinema.  The film was nominated for nine Césars in 1997, winning awards for Best Actor (Philippe Torreton) and Best Director (Bertrand Tavernier).  So intensely gripping and moving is Torreton's portrayal of the complex, fractured central character Conan that it is too easy to overlook the remarkable contributions from the other great actors around him, including Samuel Le Bihan, Bernard Le Coq, François Berléand and Claude Rich.  Tavernier's direction is as masterful as ever, although it is in the battle sequences that he impresses most.  With the help of his talented cinematographer Alain Choquart he creates a truly horrifying spectacle of carnage, scenes of mayhem that are awash with blood, adrenalin and vivid human suffering.  Capitaine Conan is a film that will leave an indelible impression on anyone who watches it; you are left not only feeling nauseous for war but also profoundly shaken by its hidden consequences.  In assessing the true cost of war, it is not just the broken bodies on the battlefield that we have to count, but also the minds of the survivors that have been damaged beyond repair.

Film Synopsis

In the final months of World War I, the French infantry are actively engaged in mopping up the enemy trenches on the Macedonian Front.  Captain Conan leads a special squad of hardened troops recruited from military prisons, winning praise from his superiors for the zeal with which he carries out his orders.  But Conan despises the military hierarchy and only has time for two of his fellow officers, the nobleman De Scève and former academic Norbert.  Once an armistice with Bulgaria is signed in September 1918, Conan and his men are sent to Bucharest, to await orders to fight against the Red Army in the Russian Civil War.  With nothing to do, Conan's men soon become demoralised and discipline breaks down.  Some of the men become bandits and carry out an armed raid on a nightclub.  Military justice is swift to act and Norbert is coerced into defending Conan and his rogue soldiers.  Conan's war is far from over...