Watched Indochine for the first time recently. Had heard of the movie back in the day but never got around to watching it. Read the reviews after I was done and thought it was interesting how most reviews were middling and the gripes reviewers had with the movie made sense. There was an expectation it seems, of a great war story told with intelligence and nuance. Indochine does not quite deliver that and to that extent the disappointment is justified. It has been compared to the French take on Gone with the Wind but that does not define this movie either.
I happened to see it as a very different story - that of motherhood and sacrifices that often go with the territory. The locale, the defining events and historical context were the backdrop against which the story of this mother was told. The articulation of a grand sacrifice is far more difficult in a mundane setting - it does not make for cinematic epic. Yet each day, everywhere in the world there are ordinary mothers who are helping their progeny achieve their dreams at an unthinkable cost to themselves. They know of no other way to be. The character of Catherine Denevue is perhaps one such mother. On the scale of maternal sacrifice, she reaches the high watermark. The irony in her story is shared with that of real mothers who also make grand sacrifices like her - posterity may not treat them kindly, even the child may feel wronged in ways that were impossible to foresee. So it only makes sense that the movie ends with such a whimper.
I happened to see it as a very different story - that of motherhood and sacrifices that often go with the territory. The locale, the defining events and historical context were the backdrop against which the story of this mother was told. The articulation of a grand sacrifice is far more difficult in a mundane setting - it does not make for cinematic epic. Yet each day, everywhere in the world there are ordinary mothers who are helping their progeny achieve their dreams at an unthinkable cost to themselves. They know of no other way to be. The character of Catherine Denevue is perhaps one such mother. On the scale of maternal sacrifice, she reaches the high watermark. The irony in her story is shared with that of real mothers who also make grand sacrifices like her - posterity may not treat them kindly, even the child may feel wronged in ways that were impossible to foresee. So it only makes sense that the movie ends with such a whimper.
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