• A slow-burn period epic (sometimes romance) with great photography and a meditative approach based in realism
  • Great photography of the countryside, wheat fields—Van Gogh or Monet paintings—photography by Caroline Champetier—worked on Holy Motors
  • Never shows the battles of WWI though it’s a main character in the film
  • People don’t always talk in the scenes—and when they do—often nobody replies—it’s a formal approach along with the intermittent shots of work going on at the farm.. There’s a scene of dialogue and narrative action, and then work being done, repeat
  • Rarely used Bressionian-like sparse score that when used- cues emotion in floods with the swelling music
  • Religious undertones—but they stay in the undertones mainly—director of Gods and Men– we have funeral, baptism- matter of fact part of the life here
  • tragic
  • the story of a flawed Matriarch (Nathalie Baye) and her and her families’ realistic struggle during WWI. She looks an awfully lot like her daughter in the film Laura Smet and it adds something for sure
  • working that never stops on the farm is almost part of the form— as is the singing from the stunning redhead Iris Bry—she sings several times throughout and the end—the prolonged shot ending on her facing the camera singing is a stunner
  • richly drawn children of the matriarch—authenticity of the era—this is a timeliness film
  • recommend for sure maybe higher