‘Mulan’ review: French Resistance hero honored in grinding, only occasionally effective prison drama

French Resistance hero Jean Moulin was 44 years old when he was captured by the Gestapo in Lyon and tortured to death, in July 1943. He has since become a national symbol of France’s struggle against the Nazis, and perhaps a figure of renewed importance now that several far-right factions have achieved successes in French elections, and around the world. So it might be a good time for a CV Mulana grim portrait of Mulan’s final days directed by Hungarian Oscar-winner Laszlo Nemes.

Mongoose specializes in this type of historical drama. His previous films have covered the Hungarian Uprising, the lead-up to World War I, and 2015’s harrowing Son of SaulLife and death in a Nazi concentration camp. His serious, sometimes heavy-handed style is clearly evident in the film Son of Saulwhich uses the nervous technique of keeping the camera very close to one of the prisoners as hell is unleashed on the ocean. Mulanby contrast, has no real gimmick; It is solid and direct, illustrated in black and pale yellow, like an old newspaper. It’s a wonderfully put together film, full of precise period detail, but otherwise indistinguishable from many of the stark and brilliant biographies that have come before it.

At the beginning of the film, it looks like we’re going to get a tense, exciting spy thriller. Umbrellas swirl from the dark night sky, one of them carrying Mulan (Gilles Lelouch), who is about to become the first head of the National Council of Resistance. We see him doing his undercover work, meeting with various members of the underground and making split-second decisions in the wake of the arrest of a close ally. With its dark cobblestone streets, its swirls of cigarette smoke, its secret glances, Mulan Effectively evokes the noir spy past. Nimes doesn’t give us any time to figure out who he is and what’s really going on, but watching all this hidden skill is compelling enough.

When an emergency meeting with Moulin’s deputies is raided by the Gestapo, the film takes a different shape. It becomes a stressful affair over Mulan’s imprisonment and torture, as Mulan steadfastly – and with great courage – refuses to give the investigators the information they are looking for. (Specifically, they want to know where the impending Allied invasion will take place. So, it’s very important information.) Nimes presents all this atrocity with formal calm; We get no swell music supporting Mulan’s heroism, and no rousing speeches. It’s just darkness and pain, although Nimes provides us with plenty of gory bits. (We only hear the sound of someone being killed by dogs, for example).

Lelouch, who was about ten years older than Mulan at the time, was mostly solid and stone-faced. Toward the end of Mulan’s ordeal, more sentiment seeps in—a “Do it for France” plea to a fellow prisoner to kill him, a bit of tenderness toward his brutalized cellmate, a national anthem sung in the face of a firing squad—but otherwise Lelouch is told to be composed and calm, and a memorial statue comes to life.

The film picks up some horrific energy when Klaus Barbie, the notorious Gestapo official, enters the frame. Barbie, played with chilling calm by Lars Edinger, is Mulan’s interrogation supervisor, a duty we see her perform with chilling persistence. Edinger brings a much-needed spark to these miserable proceedings; His profile as a sociopathic villain is, unfortunately or not, the most interesting aspect of the film. We’ve seen some version of this arrogant, cruel and infuriating presentation of Nazi pathology before, perhaps most notably from Ralph Fiennes in Schindler’s List. Edinger may not be all that terrifying, but he ably serves as a point of our anger and disgust. Then one gets even angrier when one remembers that the good ol’ United States helped Barbie avoid imprisonment for three decades after the war.

The mongoose is not interested in such a broader context. He and screenwriter Olivier Demangel keep the film tight and focused, leading the audience through the grinding pace of Mulan’s resistance and then arriving at a surprising conclusion. No title cards summarizing Mulan’s noble deeds greet us at the end; There is no blurry coda. Nimes does not speculate much about who might have betrayed Moulin and his companions, which is still a matter of controversy in France. (The film mostly references long-suspect Rene Hardy, but doesn’t spend much time on that.)

I’m sure Mulan It will stir up patriotic feelings in some Frenchmen who watch it, but otherwise it’s hard to feel a real sense of purpose in moving the film, which is so blunt and uneditorial that we might as well watch a documentary just about the facts. However, there is no archival footage of Mulan’s bloody crucible, and it seems that Mongoose had some interest in filming that. Which makes one feel a little anxious, just as Son of Saul It did for many viewers a decade ago. The mongoose seems to believe that to depict graphically means to remember and honor. Maybe there is some truth to that. Still, it’s all too easy to question the film’s motives and tone – does Mulan want people to remember him for the mechanics of his slow, painful death, or for what he died trying to save?