Rachid Bouchareb and Olivier Lorelle's movie uncovers a missing story from WWII in telling the story of the North African French soldiers who suffered discrimination while fighting for a country that not only colonized theirs but that they had been taught to regard as their true homeland.
The movie follows four natives - Morrocan and Algerian soldiers - and a pied-noir, a French sergeant living in Algeria, and is mostly an indictment against France for the way it abused its own patriot soldiers. Each character exists mostly to highlight a particular type of discrimination: there's the intelligent, outspoken native who deserves to become a sergeant and yet is always ignored in favor of Frenchmen or pied-noirs. There's the young native who becomes the sergeant's aide-de-camp in a patronising relationship (oblivious to the sergeant, of course, who thinks he's a pretty fair man). There's the native in love with a French woman and all the problems that come from that. And so on...
Since most characters exist to make points, they're never real characters. Perhaps with the exception of Sargeant Martinez, who hides his Arab roots and has a love-hate relationship with his men that makes him hard to define; and Corporal Abdelkader, a man who keeps deluding himself that one day France will recognise his efforts and valor.
There's an aura of sadness throughout the movie as for the viewer it's obvious that neither of these characters will come to any good. Every scene of this movie is calculated to draw sympathy for the way these honest, patriotic men are treated by France. And since this movie is mostly a pamphlet, it's successful. But then again, a documentary would have been even more.
There are doubts whether it's successful as art, though.
The movie follows four natives - Morrocan and Algerian soldiers - and a pied-noir, a French sergeant living in Algeria, and is mostly an indictment against France for the way it abused its own patriot soldiers. Each character exists mostly to highlight a particular type of discrimination: there's the intelligent, outspoken native who deserves to become a sergeant and yet is always ignored in favor of Frenchmen or pied-noirs. There's the young native who becomes the sergeant's aide-de-camp in a patronising relationship (oblivious to the sergeant, of course, who thinks he's a pretty fair man). There's the native in love with a French woman and all the problems that come from that. And so on...
Since most characters exist to make points, they're never real characters. Perhaps with the exception of Sargeant Martinez, who hides his Arab roots and has a love-hate relationship with his men that makes him hard to define; and Corporal Abdelkader, a man who keeps deluding himself that one day France will recognise his efforts and valor.
There's an aura of sadness throughout the movie as for the viewer it's obvious that neither of these characters will come to any good. Every scene of this movie is calculated to draw sympathy for the way these honest, patriotic men are treated by France. And since this movie is mostly a pamphlet, it's successful. But then again, a documentary would have been even more.
There are doubts whether it's successful as art, though.