Beau travail (1997)
Claire Denis managed to find the bootcamp version of the Bob Fosse quote that “The time to sing is when your emotional level is too high to speak anymore, and the time to dance is when your emotions are just too strong to sing how you feel.” A dreamlike languor hangs over this French Foreign Legion outfit based in Djibouti. Much of the film is dedicated to training sequences, the legionnaires running obstacle courses or digging away in the rocky volcanic soil. But their tasks aren’t always so literal. At intervals, their physical exercises more closely resemble interpretive dance, the group performing in unison lying on the ground or intertwining in pairs. They swim in the ocean, their knife training balletic as they draw close before kicking away. All of this is set to extracts from Benjamin Britten’s operatic adaptation of the Herman Melville novella Billy Budd, upon which this film too is loosely based. The more overtly naval and militaristic nature of the Britten compositions speaks to the source, bridging the gap in time to this new period of French military interests, this one of colonialism in Africa even after Djibouti gained its independence. These sequences are more meant to be impressionistic than literal, though I suspect that any locals driving by would stare at them just as strangely if they caught them dancing rather than randomly hacking at rocks in the middle of nowhere.
Choreography elevates the coordinated efforts and discipline of the legionnaires to an art form, but also allows for simmering hatred to boil over. Adjudant-Chef Galoup despises one of the new recruits, Gilles Sentain. There is no reason for this, but that doesn’t stop Galoup from seeking to destroy this newcomer at any opportunity. The motto “Serve the good cause, then die” becomes more of a sentence than an aspiration in the handling of discipline as this rage overtakes Galoup. One legionnaire is forced to dig a hole until his hands are bloodied because Galoup determines that he abandoned his post on patrol one night, and Sentain is sent out into the desert after Galoup provokes him into striking him as a result. Sentain nearly dies, but for what cause? Whether Galoup can find it in himself to carry on remains ambiguous, as we see him lying on a bed holding a pistol, but the film ends depicting him in a manner more in keeping with its more heightened moments, dancing alone in a nightclub similar to one where he wiled away his evenings with his girlfriend. His movements are passionate, erratic, frenzied, as if he is trying to work out just what he wants in life.
THE RULES
SIP
Someone names a country.
Narration voiceover begins.
BIG DRINK
Military exercises are performed.
A Britten composition begins to play in the soundtrack.
