You can’t call it a service – Weekend
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How do the passage of time and historical changes affect an individual body? At the end of the 20th century, Claire Denis offered viewers such a tactile odyssey in the film “Good Work,” which will be shown in the lecture hall of the Garage Museum in the “Titanium Daisies” program. A tiny conflict between a Foreign Legion soldier and a senior in rank reveals the contradictions accumulated in the soul of a European: who he is, where he is, and most importantly, why.
“From a certain point of view, I have lost everything, but everything depends on the point of view,” says the voice-over of Sergeant Galou (Denis Lavant), who wistfully recalls his years of service in the Foreign Legion. Around him is his native Marseille, in his heart is the desert of Djibouti, where he vegetated with his colleagues in the 13th regiment, devoting his life to drill, physical training, washing and ironing, and on weekends to the local disco. It was there that two mirrored, parallel worlds met: African women and European men in uniform, who either kept order or protected the Old World from themselves, where they had not yet decided how to live further – in the 21st century. Not that this is obvious today, but “Good Work” by Claire Denis definitely contributed to reflection on colonialism and masculinity, patriarchy and closedness – about everything that modern society is trying to somehow get rid of, and not carry around like a bullet under the heart.
“It is impossible to fight only for ideals. Which change so often,” explains a recruit from Russia, who had previously complained about a lack of work and money, explaining his desire to serve in the legion. This is the 1990s with their economic crises and irrational fear of the new century – many people come here for various reasons: Galu lingered at the late branch of the Red Sea out of a sense of need and elbow. In civilian life, the senior sergeant has nothing to do, just like his boss, Commandant Bruno Forestier (Michel Subord), who fled to the ends of the earth after the war in Algeria (see “The Little Soldier” by Godard). The colonies have gained independence, but are still full of the ghosts of former empires: the life of the Foreign Legion resembles a performance, feeding on the genius of the place (a kind of site-specific). The soldiers are lying in the dust, crawling under barbed wire, waving knives under water, hiding behind columns in a collapsed building – as if they forgot to tell them that the war is over, and they are carefully preparing for it, surrendering to simple actions as the meaning of life.
In fact, the cruelty will never subside, which means there will always be work for Galu and Co. True, the 13th Regiment is not involved in the fight against the echo of the uprising of the Afars, who insisted on equal representation in the central government with the Issa people. The legionnaires under the leadership of Bruno – “a man without ideals, a military man without ambitions” – are left to their own devices here: outside of politics and seemingly outside of time. Their interactions with the outside world are minimal: disco and the painful experience of new arrivals. The rest is endless physical training, eating together, playing chess, drawing arrows on the uniform. In contrast, there is the chaotic life of the local residents, who spy on the legionnaires from their routine, not without surprise.
This counterpoint in “Good Work” by Claire Denis is embedded both on the script and on the audiovisual level. The almost documentary video sequence, seen by the ruthless camera of camerawoman Agnès Godard, becomes incredibly tactile during moments of physical exercise, in addition, it is voiced by the opera “Billy Budd” by Benjamin Britten, which explains the pathos of a soldier’s life. The novel of the same name by Herman Melville, who understood something about obsession, served as the basis for the film Denis. The Frenchwoman, who as a child wandered around the African colonies with her family (including Djibouti), took the plot about the conflict between a young sailor and a petty officer from abstraction to almost concreteness, from the end of the 18th century to the sunset of the 20th.
And although in the languid glances of Galu and his comrades one can feel the literary baggage of Jean Genet, and modernity is guessed only from the logos of Coca Cola and Camel, “Good Work” captures the moment of breakdown – character and era, which most of Denis’ films are dedicated to – from the debut “Chocolat” about growing up on the estate of white oppressors to “High Society,” where humanity takes unresolved conflicts into space. All the rituals of the legion – or a legion of rituals – do not save the sergeant from jealousy: he seeks to protect the sacred brotherhood, almost the holy family, from the crafty, as he thinks, recruit. Or, on the contrary, he wants to cut off this new guy, Santin (Grégoire Colin), from the army community. Get yourself an amphibian man with a chiseled face and the equanimity of a statue, whose quiet attractiveness and love of life awakens something dark in Gala – if not attraction, then introspection.
This is a feeling of a life lived in vain, which cannot be evaporated with the sweat of training and cannot be burned out by smoking narcotic khat, cannot be expelled during casual sex and cannot be prayed in front of an icon (or during Ramadan, which is just in full swing). As another expert on obsessions, Joseph Conrad, bequeathed, even inveterate warriors are carried away by reflection into the heart of darkness – it is no coincidence that in the camera passes along the African coast, the predestination of “Apocalypse Now” appears.
Buttoned up to the neck, Galu is an unreliable narrator, deceiving (probably unwittingly) even the diary – a suicide note, which is emphasized by the unromanticizing but sympathetic gaze of Denis and Godard. Their semi-impromptu (the sergeant’s monologue was born first), sensual contact with masculinity and its toxicity is like an x-ray, which over a quarter of a century has become a diagnosis, almost a commonplace. Galu’s whole life is subordinated to the order, the order, the commandant, the highest meaning – he simply cannot imagine himself outside of this uniform, trying to hide his textured face in the shadow of a beret, behind a curtain of tobacco and chain-link mesh. He is an outsider among professional others, buried in the body of an alien culture by a shell fragment. It is difficult to let life into yourself after spending so many years in the service of death. It is difficult to navigate the desert of modern politics with a broken compass, including a moral one. It is difficult to give in to the feeling that you are used to buying at the dance.
“Maybe freedom begins with remorse?” – Galu asks at the beginning, and at the end she dances. Desperately, as only a murderer or suicide can, when no one can see.
Garage Museum, September 8, 7:30 p.m.
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