Wednesday, July 25, 2012

A Very Long Engagement (2004) by Christiane Butler



Title/Year - A Very Long Engagement, 2004
Director/Birth Country/Year Born - Jean-Pierre Jeunet - France - 1953Budget - $56.6 MillionGross - 90.1 Million (Worldwide)Synopsis - A young French woman with polio searches for her fiancĂ© who was drafted into the war.Narrative and Visual Keywords - Flash back, detective, letters, melodrama, long-lost-love.Political/ Social Commentary – War is bad, soldiers went to extremes to get out of fighting.Historical Relevance/ Recognition – The battle of the SommeNotable Collaboration – Director had worked with Audrey Tautou in Amelie, 2001, the music composer Angelo Badalamenti in City of Lost Children, and Dominique Pinon in City of Lost Children, 1995



1. Yes, the high ranked officer is relaxing in a bathtub or having his way with women in every scene we see him in. He purposefully gets an order to release some infantry men wet (Messing up the writing & making it illegible) just so he doesn’t have to follow the order.

2. The soldiers are mostly victims in this movie. Almost none chose to be there, and the main soldier character all chose to mutilate them selves in an attempt to get sent home.

3. Yes, it has a very strong romantic feel. While there are scenes that are not romantic, the whole purpose of the plot is romantic. The main male character, her fiancé who was sent to war, is scene carving notes about their future marriage on trees in the battle field.

4. We don’t really see a whole lot of the enemy, there is one scene in which we see the sister of a German who was at the same battle and she feels the plight of the main character and tries to assist her with some knowledge she has of what happened at the battle.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0344510/
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=verylongengagement.htm
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041216/REVIEWS/41201006/1023

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