Beau Travail (1999)

 

"You're not African anymore, you're a Legionnaire now." 

So says Master Sergeant Galoup, who makes his beliefs about being in the French Foreign Legion very clear: it entails absolute devotion to one's superiors and priority of duty.  And yet, for some reason, he seems disturbed by Legionnaire Gilles Sentain, one of the soldiers stationed with him in Djibouti.  There's no reason for Galoup to hate Sentain.  The other soldiers adore him, as does the Commandant Forestier. 

But Galoup accuses Sentain of being subversive.  He's constantly trying to warn Forestier about him, but Forestier won't listen.  Part of it is that Galoup is being unreasonable.  Part of it is that Forestier just isn't very interested.  Forestier lacks Galoup's fervor for the Legion, and never seems to exercise his authority. 

Galoup keeps everything in perfect order.  Forestier lies back and doesn't do much of anything.  The soldiers swim and dance and celebrate.  Galoup is apart from it all.  We never see him move as much as they do until everyone moves in unison during the group exercises. 

During the exercise scenes, loud opera music plays while the soldiers move against a backdrop of other soldiers performing identical movements while the camera circles them and weaves through them in a handheld dance.  These are scenes that make you appreciate cinematography as a physical task a person actually performs, and you get a sense of responding to something with your whole body.  To me, these are among the most effective scenes in any film, generating a feeling akin to blasting music while running, or swimming in the ocean among strong waves.  When one soldier's arms move out of view, the camera shifts and another's arms come into view.  The soldiers are part of a whole, united under authority and the image of a greater ideal.  They achieve a state of harmony with their environment.  Their devotion is evident. 

Or is it?  The exercise sequences are scarce, and between them we see scenes of certain soldiers sitting apart from others because they're fasting for Ramadan.  We see them struggling against the landscape, diminished by stark grey fields of angular rocks while performing tasks that seem far less appealing than the exercises.  Local citizens watch them with bemusement, reminding us to ask: what are they actually doing here, and why?  And the further we get into the film, the more unsettling the operatic exercise scenes become.  They are awash in eerie shades of green, or depict all the soldiers lying still on the ground like an array of corpses.  Galoup and Sentain face off as if about to fight.  

There is a culture among soldiers, something Galoup understands as a valuable tradition.  But to the others, especially the ones from nations other than France, the purpose of this late 1990s, post-colonial outpost isn't so clear.  The film opens by panning over a mural while a song about the Legion's ideals plays, then cutting abruptly to a scene in a nightclub full of people dancing.  They're enjoying themselves in a crowd, moving freely in the small space they have, meeting other dancers.  This is a film about how good it can feel to move your body and how that feeling becomes tied up in a history of violence and machismo. 

Nothing in the film ever tells us directly why Galoup hates Sentain so much; really, his rage is incredibly overblown.  Many viewers attribute it to Galoup's closeted homoerotic attraction to Sentain, converted into brutality by another part of him that denies queer sexuality.  This comports with popular readings of Billy Budd, the play by Herman Melville which Beau Travail is loosely based on.  But I disagree.  I do think homoerotic attraction is significant for Galoup in this film, but not in this way.  I understand his relationship with Sentain to be about the difference between Galoup's zealotry and the full picture of what the Legionnaires experience, and how Sentain reminds him of that difference.  

But it's obvious that the object of Galoup's attraction is not Sentain, but Forestier.  He gently handles a bracelet with Forestier's name on it as he reflects on his time with the Legion.  Right after a moment when Galoup's narration mentions being jealous of Sentain, the film cuts to Forestier's face.  The most severe blow Galoup receives in the film isn't his climactic altercation with Sentain.  It's when Forestier, his superior, fails to react to his transgressions with much more than a shrug.  Galoup believes in the Legion, and in himself as a part of it: he prides himself in obedience, and in enforcing obedience.  He doesn't fight his own desires, but expresses love according to what is most important to him: the Legion's martial values.  

When Forestier fails to do the same, Galoup faces what he suspected all along:  Forestier has more in common with Sentain, a man with no roots and no obedience, than with Galoup.  Forestier speaks Russian to a Russian Legionnaire who struggles with French.  He discusses Sentain's background with him and learns that he was found in a stairwell as a baby.  All Forestier says to that is: "At least it was a good find."  For Galoup to be torn between his love for Forestier and the pull of his experience with the Legion, the exhilaration of the opera scenes, can only end terribly. 

After an hour and a half of simmering emotions, the end of Galoup's clash with Sentain is the closest experience to physical pain I've ever encountered in a movie.  He would come across as just a misanthrope, except the film keeps flashing forward to some time after the events in Djibouti, to Galoup living in Marseilles.  He lives there after his dishonorable expulsion from the Legion.  Even though he's been kicked out of the military, Galoup perseveres with military behavior, maintaining himself and his home within precise parameters.  He doesn't appear misanthropic when we see how he so sorely misses his time as a Legionnaire.  And we can understand why, if we remember how easy it is to be swept up in their group actions.  But in the end, all he has for company is his own reflection.  That's all he could bring himself to allow the soldiers under him to be. 

A great deal of cinema is dominated by macho strongman ethics and aesthetics.  Beau Travail suggests that there really is something pleasurable about this, potentially so pleasurable that it can consume someone's life.  But it also suggests that it has no more purpose than other pursuits of pleasure, and that there is more to life. 

There are precious few films that reach Beau Travail's level of tactility, and the film twists that around on us to complicate our own experiences.  The dizzying intensity of the opera scenes contrasts with Galoup's solitude, the liveliness of the other soldiers, the agonizing denouement, and the ending.  And putting the exercise scenes aside, much of the rest of the film is as involving as if you were actually out by the sea, in the heat of the sun, or dancing through the night. 

We never see Galoup move like he's really free, like he has finally discovered a love of moving his body for its own sake, until the very, very end.  It's a surprising but cathartic moment, and I can't even describe what I feel about it other than to say I have to listen until the end of the music playing over the credits every time.