Highly Not That Great

The n'est pas was simply an English affectation - I can speak some French as well, but I was trying to be a bit Del Boy there... Sorry if it annoyed you. The "technically" mispelling was a typo, you boring pedant.

I've given an extended critique of the film in the comments section - which is also in this section. Please address your conter attack to this. Personally, I think there's nothing more intellectually insubstantial than someone who assumes ignorance/ misunderstanding when someone doesn't share their view of a film/ book etc.

I personally love the sparing use of dialogue in Dumont's work. The final speech in Flandres really captures the film's essence. I know it's annoying for the impatient and stupid that his films don't contain endless scenes of banal chatter. In most films this is clearly the case, and it would be more typical and less demanding if the moral and political meaning of the film were endlessly discoursed and made abdundantly and unambiguously clear. This is what the dialogue in Hollywood scripts often provides, and this is one of the true reasons Hollywood cinema is frequently dumb - its dialogue hammers home the meaning of its trite morality plays, resorting to clinches, explanatory speech-making, voice-overs and extended over-heated exchanges which come off like badly written theatre. Clearly Dumont's techniques have more in common with, say, Antonioni, in that's he not afraid of a slow pace, difficult ideas, moral ambiguity and, most importantly, he privileges visual and aural expression in his use of the cinematic medium, rather than the vocal/spoken element it has in common with theatre and literature. He certainly isn't Mamet, that I'll admit, but ultimately where a Mamet film may have power and originality in its dialogue, a Dumont film has equal power and craft in its visual story telling. Also, when people do speak in his film, it also has a certain resonance and power and works to provide small clues and concordances. The fact that you haved reduced Flandres to a few events you can remember from its narrative is telling, because it shows that its deceptive simplicity has indeed deceived you, and you think a complicated film about the terrifying realities of war and human nature is simple because it doesn't offer a convoluted narrative packed with event. Films which offer you space for reflection and consideration have angered you, because you didn't want to do any work for yourself. After viewing it, you were left with nothing, nothing more than the emptiness of your own intellect, because Dumont wasn't happy to accomodate your stupidity and spoon feed you. What, if I might ask, do you think of Antonioni's work, or Monte Hellman's, for that matter? Are you as happy to write off Two Lane Blacktop or Red Desert? Or Robert Bresson?

I undestand that, like many French auteurs, he has a tendency to posture when interviewed. However, it's clear that, despite their physicality, his films also exist on an intellectual level, and his deceptively simply, yet unconventional tales need to be considered intellectually, otherwise his ideas about human nature and society would be missed, and the films certianly aren't Hollywood concoction that can simply be enjoyed for their kinetic, physical pleasure, despite their ultimate vacuity.

I'm sure the Dumont remark you've taken out of context didn't mean he thought of himself as charlatan. Like Kubrick, and many "difficult" film-makers, he perhaps finds it surprising that, in such a conformist and unartistic industry, he is permitted to make such confrontational, misanthropic and original cinema.