★ 6 / 10
“David” (Ian Hart) is stuck in Liverpool in
CinemaSerf
“David” (Ian Hart) is stuck in Liverpool in the late 1930s with little by way of prospects, so he decides to go and fight for the International Brigade during…
“David” (Ian Hart) is stuck in Liverpool in the late 1930s with little by way of prospects, so he decides to go and fight for the International Brigade during the Spanish Civil War. He readily makes friends and is soon joined up with POUM, a collection of Marxists where he encounters “Bianca” (Rosana Pastor) and discovers quickly that this is a brutal conflict. His ‘side’ are united in their intellectual detestation of fascism, but thereafter he soon discovers that there is little else that glues this disparate group of communists together and after he is wounded, he heads to Barcelona where he finds even less satisfaction amongst an urban militia whose agenda is just as pragmatically conflicted as it is dogmatically joined up. What else to do but to return to his original group, but with the war rapidly coming to a conclusion and him realising that uncomfortable compromises are having to be made, is there any future for him here or might he just try to make it back home? Though this film is undoubtedly trying to make a statement, I found it to be completely devoid of nuance or characterisations. The theory of the friend of my enemy is my friend seems to be the mortar that underpins their battle plan, and yet it becomes clear that these people soon stop fighting for “the” cause and start fighting for “a” cause, In fact, it could be “any” cause that suits their generalised opposition to anything that isn’t to the left of Stalin. Indeed, the Soviet lack of commitment to their cause would suggest they might have been too extreme, or out of control, or possibly it was their total inability to contemplate compromise or conciliation that might have deterred them and just about anyone else from supplying them with arms or victuals. The message here labours the solidarity of the “left” as though it is some sort of unified holy grail of human existence, but just like that fabled object it is never going to be found by “David” or anyone else. The film despises the rise of the right in parts of Spain, but makes no effort to address why it was succeeding - beyond unsubstantiated rhetoric that somehow makes their own cause every bit as militaristic and oppressive as the one it was fighting so valiantly to resist. It presupposes a worthiness amongst these socialists to be judge and jury and depicts the contrary institutions, especially the church, as limbs of a extremist government - but it relies on the viewer’s own convictions about that to make it’s point rather then use these characters to prove they are better, or fairer or more honest and decent. The behaviour of Tom Gilroy’s “Lawrence” epitomises some of those attitudes effectively. Many of the local population viscerally affected by these years of relentless bullets and bombs were desperate for it all to end but that is the last thing these freedom fighters want and by the conclusion, well I felt that they came across more as war tourists who would fight where there was a fight to fight rather than people who actually cared about the fabric of the nation they were in. It is a provocative subject that had huge opportunities to shine a light on the unstoppable rise of nationalism from the Apennines to the Pyrenees in this turbulent decade, but instead it uses a really quite mediocre cast to score some lacklustre points and then just fizzle out. Pity.
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★ 8 / 10
The subject has aged, though not the film
Dr_Coulardeau
With the time that has elapsed since the Spanish Civil War and the time that has also elapsed since this film came out, 1995, this film has probably completely…
With the time that has elapsed since the Spanish Civil War and the time that has also elapsed since this film came out, 1995, this film has probably completely changed in meaning and what's more it must be extremely far away from what the non-Spanish citizens who participated in the Civil War might have thought at the time and might have remembered afterwards. The film shows essentially military amateurism and political strife on the front, since there was a real front with Franco and professional armed forces on the other side, as well as in Barcelona. Three trends are shown though not always clearly identified: the communists often called Stalinists, the anarchists identified as the CNT and the POUM who is some kind of Trotskyite organization both anti-communist and anti-anarchist and at the same time for total revolution as fast as possible, with the full collectivization of land, and a high level of independence, autonomy, even the refusal of hierarchy and authority. It led to a catastrophe of course with Franco helped by Mussolini and Hitler, and the communists only helped by other communist parties with the International Brigades and by Stalin provided the Stalinist model was followed. That clearly led to defeat. But an explanation is not given in the film. It is too short to just say discord prevailed. Why did it prevail? There we cannot give one answer only. There are several and even many. At first the weight of the international situation that made Spain a stake of the near future between all the western European countries, Italy and Germany included, and thus a divided West that let Hitler and Mussolini do what they wanted without any restraint, on one side, and on the other side the Communist International and the USSR who were trying to impose a clear model: collectivization of land and nationalization of industry, along with a strong state organization with a professional military force. No sense of compromise, no desire to reach any kind of compromise. Add to that the role of the church and the deep anti-clerical feelings of some sections of this Spanish left. Don't forget the sexist bigotry of a deeply catholic country and people: the equality of women could not last very long. That led to a civil war within the civil war and the defeat was guaranteed. But do not believe this film does not speak to us today, in the time of Obama in a globalized world in the midst of a financial crisis. The left is totally unable to find a complete unity on a realistic project and they have been systematically side-tracked in the recent or not so recent years in France or Italy or Greece. Spain is an exception, but probably not for long. The question that emerges from the film is: Was the social revolution advocated by these various revolutionary factions a realistic objective? Was it the real way History was going to take? I must admit the picture that comes out of this film makes me doubt it very much, especially twenty years after the fall of the last European communist experimentation. It feels as if that project was doomed to fail because of its unrealistic final objective, as well as the short term and middle term stages of that program. But there is a strong fragrance of absurdity in the depicted situation. They try to force history, accelerate it, in a way rape it, and history goes against that violation that can only work with a strong unity of the people behind that strong line and with a strong political and military power in the hands of the unified or purified leadership of the transformation, and yet for how long before a serious reform or final defeat? Sad but still true: those who try to violate history and its own pace, be they on the right or on the left, are totally blind to the fact that history does not follow a strict agenda and does not move along a straight line.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines, CEGID
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La ignorancia de los estadounidenses es preocupante. Repiten cualquier estupidez sin tener la menor idea de lo que dicen.