Best movie ever!

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

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.

One of Godard's better films from the 60's, which like a number of his films from his prime era is usually either liked a lot or detested to hell, is almost audience-dividing on purpose. His film is a black comedy that sometimes is (successfully) deceptively a bleak drama of corruption of the working man in times of War. Stylistically it is Godard all the way, though one can't disregard the likely significant contributions (though it may be hard to detect since it IS Godard's mouth all over the pie so to speak) of screenwriters Jean Gurault (usually Truffaut's co-writer), and (apparently) Roberto Rossellini. Rossellini, who was one of Godard's big influences, is countered by what was also a big influence likely on this picture, Samuel Fuller, the king of B War pictures. So one could look at the quasi-split of ideals in the film, of Rossellini's documentary style of telling it like it is, crossed with Fuller's hard professionalism and no-holds- barred view of War. Whomever influence comes through stronger, this is really Godard's show, and has here something that is fairly usual in terms of his challenging styles and criticizing past films (including Truffaut with his own comments on War depicted in film), but also is unique for how it is presented, and makes it a difficult, though rewarding experience. This is the French new-wave equivalent, to put it another way, to Sam Mendes's Jarhead; you're not sure if this really should be classified as a typical 'war' film, despite being in a league of other films already in place.One thing that is as fascinating as it is occasionally frustrating is Godard's main male actors, Albert Muross and Marino Mase, are not very expressive, and of course are not really 'actors' in the traditional sense (at least at the time they were close to un- professionals). But maybe that is what's needed, dumb farm boys who are propogandized into going to fight for their invading, nameless country; the opening scenes of the list of things the men will get is equally funny and troubling. Then the boys go off to war, and there is a really astute episodic kind of storytelling used, which works considering the short time length. One scene that really stood out was when one of the soldiers goes to see his first film ever, and is almost like some kind of primate seeing a woman disrobing on a screen (it's also arguably the funniest scene in the film). When the boys come home they are loaded with pictures, in a scene that is the one that almost had me questioning if it was either really good or really too long; the length of the list of pictures is like a litmus test for moviegoers- can you take all of these images, done almost to make a point that's not too clear? But what makes Les Carabiniers work for me is how it is so un-like other war films that it stands alone on its own terms, like a French new-wave Dr. Strangelove (though maybe not a masterpiece like that one). At times I wasn't totally sure where the satire started or ended, and there is a certain distance that Godard places with his many long-shots getting in as much landscape as tanks and soldiers with their guns. What's surprising is how the tone is always assured, which is crucial considering this is a story told through the side of the invaders this time, men working under their elusive King for land and riches and wealth. One of the best scenes I may have seen in any Godard film is when they have a woman who is at first thought to be 'a friend' of the soldiers, but then goes off on a Leninist rant. The men are about to shoot her, but can't for a few minutes, as the words she says strike some kind of chord in their primal mindsets. Amid montages of archive footage of planes flying and bombs dropping, there's a scene that would never ever be in any 'conventional' war picture. There's a real thought process going on here, and even if it's got some of Godard's usual 'f*** you, it's my style, take it or leave it' attitude, it's not totally un-accessible either. It's a slim volume of gritty anti-War pathos, and it's maybe a tad under-rated in the director's massive catalog.

One of the main things to bear in mind when watching Les Carabiniers is the context in which the film was made. Le Mépris, widely regarded as Godard's finest film, was made in the same year 1963; and it is clear in Le Mépris how much time was spent to attain perfection in composition. So Les Carabiniers can be seen as something of an experiment a rough and ready look at one of life's grittiest subjects, war, a stark contrast to the passion of Le Mépris.The intertitles play a very important role in the film, both enabling communication between the soldiers and their wives and giving an important sense of passing time. The handwriting used gives a sense of personal feeling but at the same time the often short and factual text always addressed 'On', as if the feelings of both brothers can be captured in a few words, renders them highly impersonal. The other interesting quirk is the final intertitle being handwritten despite it clearly not being written by the brothers making it almost an epitaph.The cohesive device of postcards is important in the film, one is used to encourage the brothers to join, the postcards that are acquired by the end of their service are for them the riches of the world and the way in which they are thrown into the air makes them seem almost like the money they are seeking in a scene borrowed from heist films. Godard also uses the postcard collection to be a brief encyclopedia of the world through methods of transport, animals, monuments etc. ultimately trivialising it though into something only worth a few seconds of attention.The slightly broader device of images and art is seen throughout the film, the vanity in the wives created by the magazines is clearly frowned upon; their names Cleopatre and Venus clearly demonstrating what they aspire to. The excitement with which they greet the new magazines and subsequent humour when the underwear adverts are held up to their bodies demonstrates a clear disdain for the materialism which they encourage. The artwork that the brothers see in a house that they pillage however is treated with the utmost respect, and Michel-Ange utters the words "un soldat salut un artiste". This really means two things, that contemporary popular life contributes nothing to culture, and maybe a personal comment from Godard on the necessity of education in artistic appreciation.The anti-materialistic message can also be seen in the attitude of the wives, in encouraging their husbands to go and fight and in their reception of their husbands on their return, asking first of all where their treasures are.The mis en scene plays a very important role in the atmosphere of the film; the techniques used being almost the antithesis of the polished style of Hollywood. The camera is virtually never static and Godard appears not to have used a tripod on the whole even in the establishing shots, this gives the film a sense of realism and almost documentary style where the camera is following the action as it happens. The poor quality film stock adds to this, shunning both colour and resolution to give an unglamourous view of war.The editing of the film is also very unusual; some cuts seem to break down the continuation of relation that is understood in the grammar of cinema. One of the slightly odder examples is when Ulysses is seen in a medium close-up firing his rifle into the air there is then a cut to library footage of plane taken from another plane, and a quick cut back to Ulysses suggesting that he was firing at the plane when the images seem so clearly disassociated. Another example is when one of the carabiniers at the end of the film says "Je vais vous expliquer" in a shot where he can be seen with the two brothers in a medium shot, there's then an edit with a few empty frames and a close up of the carabinier repeating the same line. The sound is very often dubbed a few frames too soon or late and there is often no sound at all when ambient sound would be appropriate. The disjointed nature seems to be a distinct and deliberate effort to make the filming of war as brutal as possible.The reality of the war is something quite interesting and strange in the film as only two of the enemy soldiers are seen during the first 45 minutes of the film, there are however many seemingly innocent civilians harassed and killed. In fact the only time that actual fire fights are seen taking place is after the war is over for the two brothers and they are out to get their rewards, the only point at which they no longer have their rifles. The scene in which they are killed by one of the carabiniers suddenly reverses the contempt the audience has towards the brothers in that they have only signed up as mercenaries with no care to what they are doing, seeking to use to army to fulfill their material desires. It is then clear that in fact they have been used to satisfy the desire of the king, and this leaves a very bitter taste in the mouths of the audience.The film is however not entirely depressing, and the scene in which Michel-Ange discovers cinema is one of the most enjoyable. The film was described by one critic at the time a homage to Lumière's films, and while it can be seen in the visual style throughout the film, the short in which a train can be seen entering a station and provokes a reaction of fear from Michel-Ange is a more direct link. The scene in which he falls through the screen while trying to interact with the film, is something that anyone who has ever seen a film will understand and sympathies with, conveying a palpable sense of naivety.There are many quirks in the film that are never really explained but serve to illustrate the bizarre situations that war creates. The sequence with the Mexican woman, the fireworks display filmed in negative, the mysterious other man with the wives who scurries away upon the return of the brothers and the poem recited by the girl in front of the firing squad.Using a combination of humour, the march down the frozen river, and pathos, the newsreel footage of dead soldiers, Godard effectively conveys the reality and unreality of war and most importantly in the end how no one benefits.

I had thought Tomb Raider was the worst movie I'd see all year until seeing this. The descriptions in the other comments are probably sufficient to describe whatever exists of the "plot." All of the scenes are intentionally absurd, although without the kind of effect this technique has in, say, The Idiots.Many of the scenes are painfully long without meaning, and feel like filler, which is surprising given that the movie is allegedly short. The worst instance of this comes towards the end, with the 20 minute sequence of laying down postcards one at a time in front of the camera, with a voice-over saying "Boat, airplane, bicycle...." The humor of the situation, and the attempt to poke fun at capitalism, is effective for the first minute or so, and very obvious, but the rest is just unwatchable. Next, the acting is awful. The main characters are consistent, if boringly one-sided, but many of the characters they interact with performed so poorly it distracts from the film. In one scene where some prisoners are being shot, there is a two to three second lapse between when the gun goes off, and when the girl being shot (about 15 feet away from the gun) jumps/jolts as if she'd just been shot, and then slumps. It's hard to believe that this sort of stuff was intentional, as Godard was clearly trying to make a political statement, not an Ace Ventura slapstick comedy, although in instances it unwittingly gets closer to the latter.The editing is what really got me though. The pathetic use of stock footage makes Ed Wood look impressive. The attempts to merge the pictures of a small handful of people running, supposedly in battle, with stock footage shots of tanks and planes, felt like a Saturday Night Live skit spoofing the stock footage. And the overuse of stock footage reminded me of the infamous B-movie "Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster" with endless collages of stock footage, interspersed with shots of 3 or 4 people and a cardboard-looking tank. The worst example, and completely unexcusable, is a scene where the star pulls the hat off of a girl who has ambushed him, and then the film cuts to a close-up of the girl's head -- and the hat's back on her! It's like Godard wasn't even trying to make a decent film.In the end, I don't think the film got beyond an unsophisticated grunt "War is stupid, capitalism is stupid." Whatever cheerleading pop-culture value the film may have had during it's time, today it's an utter waste of a movie, with an inexcusable plot, wooden and boring characters, awful acting, and editing that would get an F in a basic film 101 class.