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Description:
A rueful epic, Bertrand Tavernier's superb French-language feature, Capitaine Conan, is about a secret war that took place after World War I, when French troops were ordered to stay behind in the Balkans to continue patrolling the unstable borders. Conan, played in solitary fury by Philippe Torreton, is a merchant's son from Normandy who has come alive in the war and finds in himself a shrewd and ruthless guerilla fighter. His elite unit--a unit of "warriors," he says, rather than soldiers--operates outside the regular army, and is sent by the uncaring, aristocratic officers of the high command to take care of those operations too difficult and too messy for regular troops. A monster under normal circumstances, Conan becomes a hero in the hell of battle. Tavernier uses the widescreen frame to give the action greater scale and scope, but also uses a handheld camera mount to make the point of view as personal, impulsive, and emotionally colored as that of a separate character. The effect is one of being inside and outside the action at once, of being able to see the large-scale movements of the battles while tasting the fear and exhilaration of the individual soldiers. --Dave Kehr
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