The emperor has no clothes also, that's no emperor

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We watched Beau Travail last night and I was able to dismiss it on Letterboxd with a jokey two-sentence review, but now twenty-four hours have passed and I’ve gone from not liking it to being personally offended by and absolutely outraged at this stupid movie.

I watched it for our film group but then I missed most of our meeting for a zoom call I had to take and thus wasn’t able to get my rant out. I’m afraid it will fester inside me unless I let it out.

Probably, I could let the sins of Beau Travail slide except it’s apparently the seventh greatest movie ever made.

So I’m obviously wrong about it’s lack of merit, but I’ve seen 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 10, 11, and 12, and I can assure you that they are all vastly superior and much more worthy of inclusion.

But again: I’m wrong!

So let’s start talking about all the things I hate about Beau Travail, shall we?

First, the film is ugly. It’s shot poorly. It sometimes thinks it’s found an interesting framing, say, when the legionnaires are lying on the ground like a bunch of posed corpses, but it’s actually not interesting. When one of the leads is lying near-dead encrusted with salt in the middle of the desert? Don’t know how you mess up a shot like that but it had no visual interest to it. And no emotional content either.

Some graphic designer was able to take that shot and make it look much better for this poster, but in the movie it was lifeless and boring.

But part of the reason that scene lacked viv is probably because the scene should not have been in the movie. The film sets up a number of rules for itself in the first act. This is something all art that passes through time must do—movies, plays, novels, etc. You set up the rules and then you follow the rules. Otherwise, you break the work and it falls to pieces.

(People keep asking me as I gripe, “Don’t lots of movies break their rules?” No. Not good ones. They may surprise us. They may even seem to be breaking a rule. But always the seeming violation was set up from the beginning.

This movie not only didn’t set it up from the beginning, it insists this scene is against the rules as it’s happening.

Hhhhh.

Look: one of the potentially interesting things Beau Travail attempts is almost entirely eschewing dialogue. It’s largely wordless but much of the words we do get come from our on, single, narrating character. The film is insistent from go that we are experiencing the world of the French Legion through his point-of-view. This is the loudest, most shouted and most insistent rule the film establishes. We are in this man’s p-o-v. That’s it. So when we’re suddenly with someone else (having just been told in narration that our p-o-v never saw him again), watching him lost in the desert, I’m screaming p-o-v violation!!! at the screen. Then, mid-aside, the film again insists through narration that our p-o-v doesn’t know what happened. Then back to the aside. So…what’s happening here?

Breaking its established rules is the entire thingamathing for Beau Travail’s last act. Let’s consider the nonsensical coincidence. There was one, earlier, outside-the-point-of-view scene with a woman selling a rug. It’s out of nowhere and completely disconnected to the Legion and then it’s suddenly over. What was it—a bit of worldbuilding? To what end?

Well, I’ll tell you to what end. When the dying salt-encrusted legionnaire is rescued by some locals, the woman on the bus who gives him water is, you’ll never guess, the woman who was selling a rug.

Why?

Seriously, why?

This coincidence adds nothing. It’s clearly there so the audience will assign meaning to it, but there is no meaning to be assigned. The movie’s asking us to do more work for it than it has earned. It’s a cheap, high-school version of Ambiguity! Cleverness! Art! It’s the shape of a thing but not the thing itself. It’s an empty space and an absolute waste of your time. Don’t bother pouring any meaning into it.

Then there’s the famous dance scene that ends the film. I suspect its presence was inspired by the Red Room of Twin Peaks—but adding it because the Red Room was cool and not because it has anything to do with the film was a mistake.

And yes, yes, yes: I know the reasons that scene’s supposed to be great. And I’m glad some people find it so moving. But, hear me out, maybe it sucks?

You can say he’s dead and now his soul is free; you can say he’s finally cut lose from his jealousies and is thus able to reside in his own body; you can say that post–court martial he is reclaiming his own identity. You can say whatever you want. But once again, the movie is lying to us. Whatever the reason he’s finally cutting loose, his wild flailings are the movements of someone deeply trained in the artistic expression of the body. He moves like a dancer or a gymnast. (The actor trained in circus arts.) It’s not the character we’ve seen throughout the movie. That man doesn’t move that way. Until, suddenly, he does. Apparently because someone thought it would look cool. That’s an insufficient reason.

Also, maybe it wasn’t in 1999, but the choice of song today plays like an accidental punchline.

(Let’s set aside Beau Travail for a momnt to consider the differences between “Peluca” and Napoleon Dynamite. Both shoots filmed an extended dance with Jon Heder’s character. It’s not part of “Peluca” because it had nothing to do with the movie. They filmed it only for their own amusement. They did not put it in the movie. But that dance was set up to be a key part of Napoleon Dynamite and so, when it arrives, it works. Both movies are truthful. Unlike, say, Beau Travail.)

Just want to pause and tell you I’m feeling better already. I haven’t hit on all the things that piss me off about Beau Travail but I’ve made some progress. I feel like I should mention that Beau Travail is only 93 minutes but it bored me vastly more than much longer movies where “nothing happens” like The Tree of Life or Amour or Stalker—movies I love.

This isn’t me being a philistine. It’s me being honest with you and saying I see very little in this movie to praise. The physicality of the men is impressive. The salty antelope skull is cool. Umm…..surely there was at least one more thing I liked?

Regardless, as a whole Beau Travail is terrible. I know I’m wrong. I don’t care. I’ll go on being wrong. It’s ugly and dull, pointless and dishonest.

Oh! I really liked when it used music from Benjamin Britten’s Billy Budd opera! That music was easily my favorite part of the movie and I only wish they’d used more of it. (It was the use of Britten, by the way, that made me compare the legionnaires to the apes that open 2001.)

But there’s probably a better way to listen to Benjamin Britten than watching Beau Travail. I encourage you to find it.

(If it must be a movie, may I recommend Moonrise Kingdom?)