I could not allow the only review of this 3 parts, 2 x 52 & 1 x 100 minutes documentary be a very wrong one based on some extract of 28 minutes, viewed through a very strange ideological filter.
This documentary is one of the few anti-war documentaries that one will never forget after watching it. I do not know if this was the goal of film director Patrick Rotman. Maybe he simply strove to show without any shadows what the French did during the war in Algeria. But the result is the same.
The main question of the film is how France allowed torture to be used on a large scale during the war, and the descriptions by witnesses are very very vivid and hard to hear.
During the 205 hours, we can see many archive films taken from the period, including very horrible images of mutilated people, French or Algerian, but most importantly, we are allowed to learn what happened from direct eye witnesses. Most of them were 19-20 years old drafted young men, but testimonies also include civil and military men who were in responsibility at the time.
The film reaches a rare depth when witnesses draw several times parallels between what the SS nazies did to them during WW2 and what they personally did in Algeria.
Only one witness in the many interviewed in the film, a civil person in charge at the time, explained that drawing from his personal experience of being tortured by the Nazis and sent to Dachau, he did not accept cautioning the torture and resigned. Resigning is not much, but he is the only person interviewed who refused to participate to the horror. All the others, professional military men, or young drafted men, acknowledge participating to various extent to the tortures.
It is extremely scary to see the different reactions of the now adult men while they remember and explain. Some stay rather neutral and can talk quite remotely about their memories. Some obviously never recovered from the atrocities they witnessed or participated to. One witness apparently still do not realize the horror of his acts.
This is through all this that the film, on top of showing the terrible responsibility of France during the war, reaches its universal anti-war message.
"Except for very few exceptionally strong persons, anybody put in the right situation and right environment is potentially able to perform torture and other unthinkable atrocities".
A few other films about war or human behaviour tell us the same, a truth that we should all acknowledged and never forget.
This documentary is one of the few anti-war documentaries that one will never forget after watching it. I do not know if this was the goal of film director Patrick Rotman. Maybe he simply strove to show without any shadows what the French did during the war in Algeria. But the result is the same.
The main question of the film is how France allowed torture to be used on a large scale during the war, and the descriptions by witnesses are very very vivid and hard to hear.
During the 205 hours, we can see many archive films taken from the period, including very horrible images of mutilated people, French or Algerian, but most importantly, we are allowed to learn what happened from direct eye witnesses. Most of them were 19-20 years old drafted young men, but testimonies also include civil and military men who were in responsibility at the time.
The film reaches a rare depth when witnesses draw several times parallels between what the SS nazies did to them during WW2 and what they personally did in Algeria.
Only one witness in the many interviewed in the film, a civil person in charge at the time, explained that drawing from his personal experience of being tortured by the Nazis and sent to Dachau, he did not accept cautioning the torture and resigned. Resigning is not much, but he is the only person interviewed who refused to participate to the horror. All the others, professional military men, or young drafted men, acknowledge participating to various extent to the tortures.
It is extremely scary to see the different reactions of the now adult men while they remember and explain. Some stay rather neutral and can talk quite remotely about their memories. Some obviously never recovered from the atrocities they witnessed or participated to. One witness apparently still do not realize the horror of his acts.
This is through all this that the film, on top of showing the terrible responsibility of France during the war, reaches its universal anti-war message.
"Except for very few exceptionally strong persons, anybody put in the right situation and right environment is potentially able to perform torture and other unthinkable atrocities".
A few other films about war or human behaviour tell us the same, a truth that we should all acknowledged and never forget.