A compelling successor to such antiwar movies as Stanley Kubrick's PATHS OF GLORY and Lewis Milestone's ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, focusing, like these earlier films, on WWI. Instead of detailing the ongoing carnage of life in the trenches, however, Tavernier paints a grim portrait
of devastation after the fact. The year is 1920 (almost two years after the Armistice), and the massive task of counting corpses and identifying the missing among the French soldiers remains. Supervising these efforts is Major Dellaplane (Noiret), a career soldier obsessed with detail who turns
his responsibility into a personal crusade to justify the sacrifice made by the dead men,...
Released:
1989
Rated:
PG
Length:
135 mins