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Marguerite must navigate through the hardships of the Liberation after losing her husband and starting a relationship with the enemy during the War.
“Memoir of War” is based on the semi-autobiographical book, ‘La Douleur’ (War: A Memoir), written by Marguerite Duras in 1944, (but not published until 1985), and drawn from two texts that form a collection of six.
The film is Duras’ account of life in Paris during the Nazi occupation and the first few months of liberation. It opens in the train station as returning soldiers arrive home wearing stained uniforms and dazed expressions in search of their loved ones in the crowd. Thousands of families waited for news of their beloved’s return and among the throng of hopeful faces, is the young writer Marguerite Duras (a suitably melancholy Mélanie Thierry). Her husband Robert Antelme (Emmanuel Bourdieu), had been arrested in June 1944 and deported. She imagines his reappearance; the possibilities – and the heartbreak if the unthinkable has occurred. He is not among the first wave of those arriving.
After the war, while some are able to resume the course of their lives, Marguerite waits. And waits. And wants. And hopes. And smokes an awful lot of cigarettes. At first, she waited for the war to be over and now she awaits her husbands return. She seeks, by all means, to know what has become of him. Was he deported? Or worse, shot? She strikes up a relationship with a man named Rabier (Benoît Magimel), a collaborator, who admires Duras and her writings.
This ambiguous relationship is dangled in front of the audience like a shiny penny; this quisling has information and asks many questions (to which I wanted to know the answers). And then at some point, he disappears – poof – not to be seen for the rest of the film. Her friendship with Dionys (Benjamin Biolay) is another enigmatic relationship that leads to the conclusion of the film.
Other characters wander in and out. At discreetly held resistance meetings, members try to sift through the rumors about the treatment of Jews, political prisoners, and other potential victims. We briefly meet a man named François Morland who attends the French Resistance meetings with Duras. Decades later he becomes the president of France now known as François Mitterrand. That’s a story in itself!
A Jewish mother (the wonderfully expressive Shulamit Adar) also waits, anticipating the return of her disabled daughter. The scene where she washes all her daughter’s clothes, awaiting her arrival, is truly heartbreaking. But through narration, we already know her daughter’s fate. I felt cheated out of hope although I knew in my gut what had probably transpired.
I appreciated the complexity of bringing to the screen this difficult story of pain and suffering (the translation of the title of the book ‘La Douleur’) but director Emmanuel Finkiel uses an excessive amount of voice-over to tell the story.
In film, a perception is difficult to portray. A book does a superior job of conveying a concept like mental pain and suffering by coaxing the imagination. A film, however, is visual, sharing the intimacy of the moment. Finkiel captured the apprehension and impatience by utilizing an unusual technique that combines the spoken word with close-up gazes of sorrow and lens blurring. In essence, an audiobook brought to life on the screen, merging two different mediums – the literary and the cinematic. This may be fine for a short duration, but “Memoir of War” is over two hours long!
To his credit, Finkiel encourages the audience to ponder what they would do if they were in her shoes. Would you surrender to the grief?
The press notes included an interesting detail about the director and why he chose this story to adapt for the big screen. He first read ‘La Douleur’ when he was around 19 years old and found it overwhelming. “It also resonated with my own personal history…this character is reminiscent of my own father, who I believe was someone always waiting, even after he knew for certain that the lives of his parents and his brother had come to an end in Auschwitz. For those who had no physical remains, absence was always present.”
As Tom Petty crooned, “You take it on faith, You take it to the heart, The waiting is the hardest part.” I think Marguerite Duras would wholeheartedly agree.
This review is reprinted with permission from the Texas Jewish Post.
Opens at the Angelika Film Center in Dallas Friday, August 31st
