Everything came so suddenly.
French actor Gaspard Ulliel tragically passed away at the age of 37 in a ski accident on January 19, local time.
In his short life, Uriel's outstanding performance is making him a rising star in French cinema. Who knows that things are unpredictable and fate is impermanent.
After the tragedy, his collaborator Xavier Dolan ("I Killed My Mom") issued a eulogy, saying he was exhausted and shocked by Uriel's departure. French President Manuel Macron also offered praise for the talented actor in his condolences.
Ulliel was born in a typical middle-class family in France. His father was a designer and his mother was a modeller.
By chance, Uriel first joined the big screen at the age of 11 and started his acting career.
At the age of 18, he got his first important role in his life, in "Kiss Your Love", he played a young man who discovers love and lust.
Soon, Jean-Pierre Genet ("Amelie") directed "The Long Engagement" to his acting career. Tatu (the heroine of "Amelie") staged a heartbreaking and bitter love.
Strictly speaking, Uriel is not the absolute protagonist in the film, but with the director's superb narration bringing a serious reflection on the war, the role of Uriel's true character has become a very important existence that illuminates the theme of the film. .
Manek (Gaspard Ulliel), nicknamed "Cornflower", was not yet 20 years old when he was fighting the Germans on the front line. , witnessing all kinds of tragic scenes.
Under the pressure of great pressure and the desire to survive, Manek finally chose to take the risk and use self-mutilation to escape the war. That choice ultimately saw him and four others be court-martialed for intentional self-harm and sentenced to exile.
For a deserter, the most cruel thing is to choose a place of exile at the forefront of the war - this is the buffer zone between the German and French armies during the armistice, and once the war reignites, they will inevitably become the flesh of both sides' firepower. target.
Survival instinct led some to surrender to the Germans, only to be lynched by their own soldiers for treason.
The ensuing war razed the buffer zone to the ground, but according to eyewitness feedback at the time, two of the five exiles eventually survived.
Matilde, played by Tatu, is undoubtedly the most distressing character in the film. She and Manek have known each other since childhood. The two grew up together and played with each other.
If it weren't for the war, they should have been able to marry and have children and enjoy their old age like ordinary French country families. However, Manec's disappearance in the war zone made everything come to nothing.
Fortunately, Mathilde is a strong girl. Although the hope of her lover's survival is slim, she still believes that the other party is still alive, and put it into practice, hiring detectives in Paris to find the whereabouts of her fiancé.
As the detective and her traveled across the country, the whereabouts of the five deserters began to slowly surface. The exposure of the truth makes the complex human nature refracted in the war astonishing.
The most irritating of these is the bureaucracy's indifference and indifference to the fate of individuals.
Regarding the punishment of the self-mutilating soldiers, in fact, the high-level officials have already made a decision to pardon, but this order was ignored by the front-line officers, and the original judgment of the military court was still maintained, so that the soldiers could have achieved the reunion and become the vested interests. Victims of dereliction of duty.
Marion Cotillard's ("Inception") prostitute discovers this during her lover's investigation, and goes on a ruthless hunt for someone who ignores her superior's orders.
This brave woman is essentially doing the same thing as Mathilde, just in different ways. The lover's relics have been passed through the hands of others, and the note that was finally conveyed through Matilda was delivered to the prostitute just moments before she was about to be executed by the government, giving the film a certain tragic irony.
Hatred blinded a person's eyes, but she lost her love, how could she let the bad guy go unpunished? This is indeed a paradoxical question.
The aftermath of war is not just hate, but more complex content.
There is a very important detail in the film. In the process of investigating the whereabouts of the lover, in addition to the investigation of Mathilde and the private detective, the other two women also greatly promoted the progress of Mathilde's search.
One is the prostitute just mentioned. She told Mathilde that soldiers who had been in contact with self-injured soldiers said they had seen two surviving self-injured soldiers in the rear, including a young man.
This gave confidence to Mathilde's tracing program, but it was a disaster for the prostitute. Because the soldier's description of the physical features was seriously inconsistent, she believed that her lover was not among the two, so she launched a follow-up pursuit.
Another woman who helped Mathilde was from hostile Germany.
When revisiting the battlefield, Mathilde accidentally met a German woman who also came to pay her respects to her family. The other party later revealed that after the battle that day, French soldiers had witnessed the corpses of self-mutilated soldiers on the battlefield.
Strangely, except for the self-mutilation soldier who was shot and killed by his colleagues, they only found two bodies at the scene, and the other two bodies that were originally believed to be dead disappeared.
There is a lot to say about the two "corpses" that disappeared.
After the war broke out, the surviving Manek and another self-mutilation soldier replaced the dead on the battlefield, and then started a reclusive life with a new identity.
At the end of the film, Mathilde used the bass trumpet for the first time to sound the music symbolizing hope, instead of using the single note representing despair to send out a distress signal. for exchange.
This is a "happy" ending that is not destined to be happy.
Looking at Manek in front of him, and the phrase "Does your foot not hurt?" he blurted out, Matilde, who was crippled due to poliomyelitis, heard it, and his heart was cut like a knife.
It was the first greeting from Manek when he saw Mathilde, and if it wasn't for the boy's initiative, the two of them would not have had a story that followed.
Times have changed, and the boy, though he doesn't remember who Mathilde is, still cares about her, but in the polite way of a stranger.
The person who once made eachother's vows with him is close at hand, but he also leaves forever. Compared with the disappearance of the body, the passing of memory is the true death of a person.
A originally beautiful relationship was destroyed because of the war. The enemy who was sworn in in history later became part of the European Union one after another. This shows the director's negative attitude towards war.
Sadly, Manek's ending was carried over into reality, and Gaspard Ulliel didn't even end up physically coming back to life as he did in the movie.
This time, he really fell asleep.
Written by / Zed
Planning / Youth Power
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