Laikals The greatest movie ever made..!

Doomtomylo a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

Iseerphia All that we are seeing on the screen is happening with real people, real action sequences in the background, forcing the eye to watch as if we were there.

Janis One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

chace-2 Jean Rouch has called this movie, the best anti war movie ever. He points out that the anti-epic character of the movie comes most close to the character of war, because war also works really anti-epic, too. So I really can't understand why the first comment to this movie on this page, which is really foolish and just shows that its writer has no idea of movies at all, isn't removed!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It insults the work of a genius.

themadstork Godard might very well have set out to make an anti-war movie with Truffaut's comment that a truly anti-war film was impossible in mind, but even judged solely as an anti-war statement this film's a failure. Why? Well for one thing, Truffaut may have been a genius, but on this score he was certainly wrong. There definitely is a danger of aestheticizing anything you put on film, especially if you do it well (think of just how beautiful Sam Peckinpah can make a massacre), but aestheticizing war doesn't mean you can't successfully make an anti-war film. Think of "The Bridge on the River Kwai," "The Grand Illusion," or the more recent "Downfall." All are fairly conventional war films and none of them exactly make one want to go out and enlist. "The Grand Illusion," and to a lesser extent "Bridge on the River Kwai," paint a romantic picture of war only to undercut it later. You can't help coming away from those films with the message that, while there might be some nobility in war and the ideals that allow men to fight, both war and the ideals that motivate it are a form of madness. "Downfall" is a completely conventional war film, but it never makes war look like anything other than dirty, terrifying and completely insane. And to me this seems exactly the way one should make an anti-war film. Engage in dialogue with those who might find some nobility in war, admit their point, and try to show what's wrong with it while admitting its appeal; or show just how ugly, brutal, dehumanizing, and insane war is with as much realism as you possibly can. "Les Carbiniers" does neither. It's a smug statement aimed at those who already think that all war is wrong and anyone who fights in one degenerate and evil. People in that camp will no doubt find much to agree with, though little to entertain them, but anyone not so convinced will probably just be bored and angry. And who is it one's trying to reach with an anti-war movie anyway? In the end Godard succeeds too well at making an ugly film. Everyone here is either thoroughly nasty, helpless, or silly. It's kind of like Evelyn Waught at his nastiest, only not nearly as funny. In the scene where the captured partisans are shot Godard seems to me to mock the very idea of human dignity. But what is it that makes war so bad? Isn't it that people get killed? If people are as worthless as this film makes out, who really cares if they get killed? Even Waugh didn't' go quite so far; one always found a few noble fools here and there. The movie isn't a total wash. It might not be Waugh, but it is nastily funny here and there, and Godard was a pretty good craftsman when it came to film. Unfortunately, when you get down to it, this might be Godard's most characteristic film. Godard and Truffaut are often linked, but really ther films aren't alike. With Truffaut one always finds sympathy for his characters and there's just a certain warmth and light touch that permeate almost everything he did. One certainly doesn't find that in Godard. Yes there's craft and cleverness here, but also coldness, cynicism, and a failure to understand, or possibly care about, basic human emotion. To me that's what's characteristic of Godard; it's on display even in Godard's "more accessible" (I'd say "better") films like "Band of Outsiders," but nowhere is it clearer than in "Les Carabiniers," which might make it the best Godard film to start with if you really want to get an idea of the man and his work. Truffaut was a humanist in the true sense of the term, whereas Godard, like too many French intellectuals, subscibes to Ivan Karamazov's line: He loves humanity (in the abstract of course) and hates human beings.

Daniel Hayes Compare this with "Le Mepris." One is a wonderful meditation on film-making saturated with the director's one personal issues. It shouldn't work, but it does, and spells out a real talent. The other is an absurdest's take on war and the ignorant and animalistic impulses that it spawns. This also shouldn't work, and it doesn't. All the cinema-verity arguments in the world aren't going to change the fact that the film sets out to create a wholly unconvincing argument for the absurdity of war.Perhaps as a 60's French director, Godard wasn't as immune from the vogue political ideas of the time as we might like to think, and this might be him purging it from his cinematic career. And something might be said for the film as encompassing a movement that the director himself doesn't even need to agree with.But, as Truffaut pointed out, it may be just as hard to film a satire on war as it is to make a decent adaptation of "The Odyssey." 3 out of 5 - Some interesting elements

DumaNV After catching this film on Turner Movie Classics last night I wondered what all the fuss was about. I remember hearing and reading about this film in the 70's and 80's as being one of the great grand-daddy's of anti-war genre. After sitting though it, all 85 minutes of agony, and hoping that every minute that this film will get better, I realized that this is simply a poor film. My expectations were higher, considering what these writers/directors had produced (Jules and Jim, Contempt, Weekend, The Wild Child, etc.) but what came out was worse than some sort of no or low budget sophomoric attempt to make a statement that fails. Even the attempt at humor, one of the brothers at his first movie, became a very cheap and childish shadow of Chaplin.About 1/3 of the way through I simply gave up caring about either one of the brothers (or their moronic wives) and stuck with the film simply because I hoped that there would something that would elevate it from putting it the same class as two 10 year olds who got a hold of daddy's movie camera. It never did. Even the cast members who had lesser roles, the car salesman, the Italian woman, the communist girl, etc., all looked as bored as I felt. The young communist girl actually looked happy to be killed just so she could get out of this mess.Plan 9 From Outer Space, move over.