Indigènes - Days Of Glory

Days of Glory (or Indigènes to the rest of the world) covers the tale of a handful of North African volunteers fighting among the Free French Army during the latter parts of World War II. Built around the strong performances of Jamel Debbouze (Amelie), Samy Naceri, Roschdy Zem and Sami Bouajila as the volunteers, the plot covers the traditional ground of raw recruits bonding together and surviving to go on and prove themselves as brave and valuable soldiers.

The film has received much praise for the addition of a strong political message about the racism shown towards the central characters, but unfortunately I felt the horrific prejudice and inequality suffered by the Arabic and African troops was too often dealt with in an offhand manner, encouraging its dismissal by the audience as of little consequence and frequently appearing irrelevant. This, however, doesn't detract from it being a great war film: the battlefield scenes are handled very capably, capturing the personal horror of conflict in a similar manner to that which Steven Spielberg championed with Saving Private Ryan. Here though there's much less schmaltz to attract us to the main characters, but still the immediate sense of danger and fear for them is just as powerful. Both the first large-scale battle and the final intimate last stand are the equal of any involving battle scene.

The political message of the film is hammered home at the end, in a cliched ‘60 years later’ visit to war graves with text captioning that eventually forced the French government to change policy and re-instate pensions for soldiers they had tried to write out of their history. Possibly, though, the most striking political thought for me was the only recognition of any actor in the film was of their roles in Hollywood blockbusters over the last decade—playing the generic terrorist bad guy …

Subtitled for those not fluent in Arabic and French, Days of Glory is out now on general release in the UK. Rated 12A.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0444182/
http://www.daysofglorythefilm.com/

Seph · 6th April 2007, 3:46pm

Been dying to see this..

Woolies · 7th April 2007, 10:12pm

tempted to go again (& maybe I could write something less rubbish about it

)

I do wish there'd been a stronger subplot to tie together all the bad treatment prejudice stuff though. But as well as the good battle scenes there's a couple really touching emotional bits in there as well that'd be worth a second viewing I reckon

Charlicat · 7th April 2007, 11:43pm

I felt a wee bit disappointed. I don't know if it was that the characterisation wasn't as evolved as it could have been, but I didn't feel as much empathy and hence didn't greet like an arsehole as much as I thought I might. Had cherry coke though.

Woolies · 9th April 2007, 5:19pm

It's tricky to empathise with the plight of those denied tomatoes when cherry coke is a five-a-day staple.

Charlicat · 9th April 2007, 5:23pm

They were excused from having to eat tomatoes, and they were complaining?

Some people just want a whine.

Woolies · 9th April 2007, 5:33pm

I don't think they fought the Ardennes-Alsace campaign just to get back the Reisling vineyards.

Liberty, Egality, Winery.

Blue Skin · 9th April 2007, 6:07pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by Charlicat

I felt a wee bit disappointed. I don't know if it was that the characterisation wasn't as evolved as it could have been, but I didn't feel as much empathy and hence didn't greet like an arsehole as much as I thought I might. Had cherry coke though.

MY FUCKING COKE!

Movie was far too plodding at times and the characters were murky (we were supposed to empathise with Said then he becomes a dickhead?) Nah. Movie was decent enough, coulda been better.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Woolies

I don't think they fought the Ardennes-Alsace campaign just to get back the Reisling vineyards.

Liberty, Egality, Winery.

Liberty, Eggality, Faternity.

Fuck that felt good.