johnnyboyz Flandres is a depiction of what happens when simple people are placed into complicated situations; it is a quite shocking, although stirring, war-set drama which is more about the tragedy of how human beings can slump to the depths we're able than it is about the tragedy of war itself. The folk in the film are unassuming, uncreative and with little to say nor do during their days in an undetermined, mostly rural, French speaking nation; the sorts of scenarios they eventually come to find themselves in are very much the opposite – the film playing out like a perverse circus of what happens when a test gerbil is placed in an environment it has little-to-no-hope of conquering, and all for our viewing displeasure as we sit back and witness the experiment.People in Flandres make love without emotion; they live life without empathy; and find it difficult to react to levels of deplorable violence. It is to this extent that Bruno Dumont's film is more a burning, nihilistic drama than a war film per se; a film that weeps for mankind, a film depicting a desensitisation that the species has for love; violence; fellow man and attitudes towards life. The film follows a young man named André (Boidin), an ugly man; a simple man, a farmer in the wooded plains of what could be France; what might be Belgium or what might even be somewhere as seemingly disassociated and arbitrary as Luxembourg. Farm life is routine: it snows in the winter and a lot of walking is generally required in a zone cut off from urbanised living. These people, other farmers and the young females living in close proximity, rarely speak with whatever communication required between them done so via glances and meagre actions. Since there is nary an awful lot that needs getting done in the first place, it is all that these people need to amass in their communication in order to get things done. So rarely do things happen in the lives of these people that a crude, seemingly random, sexual relationship between André and young Barbe (Leroux) strikes us as almost illegitimate.It is on one of these days that one of André's few friends relays to him that he will be going off to war in the near future. In their leaning up against a barn wall, while appearing to systematically stare off into the distance beyond a nearby gate at what's beyond, we sense that this might very well be a jump for this character greater than it might be for others: nary do these people treads beyond into the wider unknown and what has just been spoken of would be a drastic change. Sure enough, Dumont's cut from the ice cold European territory to the flat, arid deserts of this unspecified place engulfed in a war between Europeans and Arabs is the sort of jump in composition that can only emphasise this.André has clambered aboard in the drafting process, the idea that where they're headed is the unknown and the ambiguity surrounding what the war is for, as well as you might say the specific name of the country, is supposed to encapsulate most of what's going on in the Middle East, as Caucasians from most nations vie with locals in a place of which they've probably not previously heard for surface means of which they think they're aware. Trying to work out where exactly the warzone is acts as a pleasing distraction once all the war-set nastiness kicks off; where the clear inflection is Iraq or Afghanistan, Dumont appears to tie in the jungles of somewhere like North Korea to add to the idea this foreign war might just as well be anywhere. The wartime sequences are as harrowing as any from most war films, while the film itself is often constructed as if not even a war film in the first place but some sort of survival horror piece wherein folk have wondered into a Hellish bloodbath where one can only (how did Mr. Blonde put it in Reservoir Dogs?) "Pray for a quick death you aren't going to get".Dumont doffs his cap to the likes of Full Metal Jacket with a sequence involving a sniper, a confrontation which eventually leads onto the encountering of a child soldier and the nastiness which comes with that. His greatest achievement, however, is how he constructs this idea of life on the homestead and life at war being more intrinsically linked than one might think - principally, the merciless disregard for young life in the executing of these child soldiers as well as the domestic termination of an unborn as well as the desire to instigate casual sexual intercourse with the women of where one happens to find one's self. This whole idea of white Western men, few of whom are bright in the first place, arriving on the shores of what is otherwise a stark change in climate and way of life in the form of a foreign country, before instigating their attitudes and ways of life upon what's around them, also feels apparent if not the primary focus. With a steady eye for agonised detail, Flandres is the painful piece of cinema I wasn't expecting heading in – its topical nature combined with its grizzled aesthetic demonstrates a real talent at work while the experience as a whole stays with you for some considerable time, all of which adds up to something worth tracking down.

pdee-1 I gather French movie makers receive subsidies to produce French language movies - is this true ?It would help to explain the number of tedious pot boiling French movies. There is little commercial incentive - just put something together and collect the check from the government ?I am always suspicious of movies where and when people just aimlessly wander around or indulge in desultory conversation (if it could be called conversation) They tried to insert some action into the film - not very convincing. A military expert would come down hard on troops herding together in a gaggle under fire instead of dispersing. And a helicopter landing directly into an area under small arms and grenade/mortar fire ?(and getting away without coming under fire! Lucky guys! )

missingtth It's funny: a previous entry suggests a turn to Carlos Reygadas (over Dumont); the fact is that Reygadas is obviously borrowing from Dumont in his latest Silent Night. Make no mistake though, Dumont IS the original. There isn't a more progressive, uncompromising, audacious filmmaker working in the world of cinema today. And you should be very cautious when you run into someone who puts down his work so angrily. These people have serious political motivations in criticizing Dumont's approach, just like I have serious political motivations in defending him. But if you don't see the humanist tone to his films and you're only aware of the misery and depredation, then you're not looking at the film properly or you have very little humanism in you to begin with.I know that might sound harsh, but it must be stated, frankly.I know for sure that Dumont's work gives a lot of hope to socially responsible artists and filmmakers. In the end he's just picking up on a legacy of bold, realistic film-making that was abandoned by the Americans in the seventies (read: What ever happened to the progressive independent American Cinema?).See all his films open minded, and your world view will be challenged in a way that it hasn't before.

not_even_one No, really. I have no idea how I managed to watch this thing to the end, but the only advice I can give you is: by all means, do not waste an hour and a half of your life watching this. I seriously don't know where to start with what's wrong with this title, maybe because there's nothing really right about it, save for one single subplot set...in a war, either in Afghanistan or Iraq (see, we don't know which war it is), involving Belgian soldiers and a female enemy combatant. Otherwise this 'movie' is a mess of randomly thrown in characters (you'll find yourself thinking 'who the hell is this?' all the time if you gather enough courage to watch the movie), pretentious artsy directing (close-up of a face followed by a wide angle shot of the landscape...throughout the WHOLE movie), a practically non-existing plot (there's three changes of settings, neither of which makes sense because we never learn anything about the characters or their motivations, or their personal stories), practically non-existing dialogs, or communication for that matter that I guess was meant to be part of Dumont's vision but just adds up to a big pile of nonsense (yeah...there's a whole lot of staring-thoughtfully-into-the-distant landscape in Flanders, especially at the scene where they're hanging out in the field). Now from a technical point of view, whoever recorded and mixed the sound probably won't find another production to work on in the next 20 years. Also, I thought about it real hard, but I couldn't come up with a rational explanation as to why the producers thought it would be a good idea not to have ANY music in this film. Especially given the fact that there's a huge gap created by the severe lack of dialog in there. Moreover...since when do Flemish people speak French? This would cause a riot in Flanders. And how is it that a bunch of soldiers are left on their own in Iraq/Afghanistan, without any supervision or contact with their base and/or commanders? Where are the PEOPLE? Military operations are conducted in strategic spots (e.g. populated areas)...so why do we have one bad guy popping randomly out of nowhere every once in a while? And the military using horses alongside tanks and Hummers? You can't be serious. Apparently, Dumont wanted to depict an ultra-realistic image of humanity, but realism does not equal incoherence.Do not waste your time on this.