stuff here is beyond the more.

In a related note, he always keeps his glory-seeking in its proper place. When he has the opportunity to become the king over Geatland at Hygelac’s death, even though Hygelac has a son and heir, he doesn’t do it, despite the entreaties of Hygelac’s wife Hygd: “There was no way the weakened nation could get Beowulf to give in and agree to be elevated over Heardred as his lord or to undertake the office of kingship.” Instead, he pledges his sword and wisdom to Heardred, aiding the young king until he was mature enough to rule on his own. Beowulf’s patience would be rewarded, as he becomes king rightfully after Heardred’s death anyway. Note that this was also a wise move on Beowulf’s part, as well as one loyal to the rightful kingly succession–had he taken the throne earlier, Heardred could very well have resented him instead of respected him, and caused a whole new intrafamilial blood feud.

Beowulf’s generosity and kindness to his followers is contrasted throughout the poem with men who are selfish (Heremod), jealous (Unferth), and who disrespect their kin to the point of killing them (Grendel, Unferth); instead, he “took what came, cared for and stood by things in [his] keeping, never fomented quarrels, never swore to a lie.” Besides being heroic, he is truly honorable.

The underground city looked pretty cool, though. But the investigator is pretty crappy at keeping people, you know, alive. The weirdest thing is that there seem to be too many elements (the kidnapping itself, Sarah’s double identity, the ex-wife, the political stuff, the extra bodies that keep turning up, Marcie’s strained relationship with Sarah and her dad, Ben and whatever he’s doing…) and yet also be too slow-moving. I assume that all these things are going to connect together in some way, but I think it might have been better to have a more focused plot at this point in the show.

What I’d really like is to find out more about the conspiracy behind the whole thing, not the minute-to-minute reacting to immediate difficulties. Killing Veronica last week didn’t make me happy. I’m actually sort of meh on the show, but there’s not much else to watch, at least not for a few more weeks. We’ll see how it goes. Oh, side note…the college girl that was suspicious of Tweener and IS STILL GIVING HIM A RIDE? ALONE? So dumb.

It only took about ten minutes to disabuse me of the latter portion of that thought. You know when you’re watching a film, and you’re suddenly hyperaware that you’re watching a great film? Not great in the dry, film studies must-see Citizen Kane sort of way, but in the living, vital, immediate sort of way. That’s what watching Grand Illusion was like. The knowledge that you’re seeing something special…even though you knew it was special through reading about it; but here it is experientially. Not all “great films” have this quality, forget about whether they’re actually “great” or not. Direction, photography, acting, dialogue, story, everything that goes into making a film is near-perfect here. It’s proof-positive that acting in old movies isn’t always hackneyed or old-fashioned. Jean Gabin and the others could hold their own with any modern actors hands down.

Gabin is a French pilot in the early days of WWI. He and another officer (an officer of the fading gentleman class of military) go on a routine reconaissance mission, but are shot down and become prisoners of war. The POW scenes are fascinating, because the prisoners are practically treated as guests. They are allowed entertainments and packages, and have an amazing amount of freedom within the prison camp. Renoir even addresses this in an introduction filmed for Grand Illusion‘s rerelease, and pointed out how different the beginning of WWI was to WWII…before the entrenched warfare of 1916-1918, WWI was sort of the last gentleman’s war. And that is explored, as the French gentleman officer is given special treatment from the German prison-camp commander, who is one of the last of the German gentlemen soldiers. I don’t know whether I believe that whole dynamic or not, but it works within the story quite well.

Despite how well they’re treated, of course, they still want to escape, both to see their families again and to continue fighting, and the majority of the film is taken up with escape attempts. But through it all, Renoir never loses sight of the characters, and their humanity. Despite this being a war film, there are no scenes of war. There is only the background of knowledge that it is there, and our hindsight knowledge that though they are confident it will be over in a few weeks, it will last much longer and be much more devastating than they can even imagine.

It covers a lot of ground, but each scene, each line, each glance is perfection. I would like to watch it again for the first time.