| 72; 3.5 stars; B+ | dir. Jean-Luc Godard | French | 80 min | PG |
During war in an unnamed, imaginary country, soldiers recruit unsuspecting farmers by promising immeasurable riches and rewards; two of these farmers write home about their exploits.
Overlooked by most today, this fifth feature by cinematic legend Jean-Luc Godard sees the auteur reinvent himself once again; following the free-spirited musical-romance of ‘A Woman is a Woman’ and the solemn, Bressonian melodrama of ‘My Life to Life’ is an outrageously comical satire whose farcical elements are generally effective in conveying an anti-war sentiment.
It features, primarily, two farmers. They are country bumpkins, leading ordinary and mundane lives on the land with their wives. Then, soldiers descend upon them with lucrative job offers, which the men in their naïveté accept without much skepticism. There is a barrage of questions, though, and these centre around the material prospects of war: one of the farmers bombards his newfound comrade with these, and the comrade’s replies are typical of war propaganda, minus the patriotic aspect.
‘The Carabineers’ once again displays Godard’s wit and disregard for conventional storytelling. It is, on the surface, a war film, with a highly comprehensive display of gunfire, assault, and looting enough to entice even a moderately mercenary individual. But over the course of its second and third acts (the fighting and the spoils) this structure is viciously overturned, amplifying the ridiculousness and hollow promises of war violence. One of the soldiers assaults a woman and takes great pleasure in executing civilians (a pleasure that, scarily, resembles childish curiosity).
The climatic sequence of the film lasts a good five minutes — the farmers, having returned home, share their wartime loot, consisting solely of photographs of goods, treasures, famous places, erotica, and so on. The spectacle of war is hence displayed, an empty and devastating reality.