Billy Budd (1962)
Directed by Peter Ustinov
Billy is an innocent, naive seaman in the British Navy in 1797. When the ship's sadistic master-at-arms is murdered, Billy is accused and tried.
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What critics compared Billy Budd to
He's formally dressed like a businessman, and one of his daughters calls from the roof: "Travaille bien" ("work hard"), a comic reference to Claire Denis's film Beau travail (aka Nice Work), a reshaping of Melville's Billy Budd set in the French Foreign Legion, in which Lavant played the Claggart figure.
The power struggle between his Thomas Wake and Pattinson’s Ephraim recalls Melville’s Billy Budd , including some eventual homoerotic overtones well-played by both actors (Melville also gets a diegetic shout-out and a subtitle homage at the credits).
High Life seems to aspire to be a cosmic Beau Travail—her dreamlike 1999 adaptation of Billy Budd, set among French Foreign Legion soldiers training in the desert—but it is ultimately too capricious.