A Very Long Engagement (2004)
Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Young Frenchwoman Mathilde searches for the truth about her missing fiancé, lost during World War I, and learns many unexpected things along the way. The love of her life is gone. But she refuses to believe he's gone forever — and she needs to know for sure.
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What critics compared A Very Long Engagement to
Other films such as Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s A Very Long Engagement and Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan have done better jobs at bringing home the cost that war takes, particularly on the civilian population.
Well, Jean-Pierre Jeunet took a stab at the war to end all wars back in 2004 with A Very Long Engagement , but the conflagration, which saw more than 40 million dead or wounded, just isn’t oft-depicted in film as its later cousin.
From time to time, memories surface of other films that involve life in the trenches or long journeys through perilous, death-strewn landscapes — Paths of Glory , most of all, but also Saving Private Ryan , Full Metal Jacket , A Very Long Engagement , Come and See — even if aesthetically it bears the most resemblance to the simulated continuous take style of Birdman .
Basically, if you’ve seen those two seminal Second World War movies from 1998, plus A Very Long Engagement , Atonement and Joyeux Noël to name but a few referents – then you’ve seen this.
All told, Dunkirk may not have the crushing impact of Saving Private Ryan or A Very Long Engagement (a World War I film, but a useful comparison), and its visual of all those English boats sailing over the horizon to save the soldiers isn’t as overwhelming as it would like.
(There are moments where the storybook narration evokes " Amelie " and " A Very Long Engagement ," which likewise keep their heroines at arm's length, but Lively is no Audrey Tatou.)
Atonement opens on a little girl's doll-house and ends on an old woman's vision, and in between shuffles from The Go-Between to Brideshead Revisited to A Very Long Engagement before settling, naturally, on Titanic.