Les Carabiniers (1963, Jean-Luc Godard)

A Godard war film. Of course, you can expect lots of politics, a completely impersonal and detached sort of film, one which doesn't have a rosy view of human nature, and contains satirical elements. Essentially, "Les Carabiniers" is a film that attempts to be neither involving nor formally compelling, and inhabits a world of its own, really. It's dark and vicious and ugly, but stops for comic set-pieces and unabashedly dark satirical digs at war-mongerers and violence in general. It's not really an anti-war film, it's an anti-'war film' which completely subverts all of the conventions of the genre.

As far as Godard's ouevre goes, this is unquestionably one of his least satisfying works, and competes with "Made in U.S.A." for the title of his worst 60's film. The jokes are smug and self-satisfied (without being interesting, as much of Godard's work is), and the politics are similar to what made Godard's Marxist period in the late sixties/early seventies so unbearably aggravating. "Les Carabiniers", with its plot concerning two peasants drafted into the king's army, whose victories on the battlefields lead to their execution as traitors, offers little of worth narratively or even on a technical level, with some interesting experimental editing and typically Godard-ian attempts to remind the audience that it's just a movie shining bright amidst a muddle of superficial and rather stupid political satire and scatter-shot attempts at disconnect and surrealism.

"Les Carabiniers" was originally regarded as a disaster, but is now acclaimed by many. Neither consensus has it right, but I'd say that the critics who lambasted it in the 60's were a bit closer to the truth than those who praise it today. It's an important film to see when studying Godard as an auteur, but it is indicative of his worst rather than his best work.