After World War II, a small French village struggles to put the war behind as the controlling Communist Party tries to flush out Petain loyalists. The local bar owner, a simple man who likes to write poetry, who only wants to be left alone to do his job, becomes a target for Communist harassment as they try and locate a particular loyalist, and he pushes back.
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Simply A Masterpiece
I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.
It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,
Acting of the very highest quality. If Depardieu ever merited an Academy Award this would have been the film, not Cyrano. The rest of the actors are of the highest standard, especially Philippe Noiret who has a superb scene where he explains how he has developed his peculiar vision of life. This film never got all the credit it should have probably due to the complexity of the characters. This reviewer believes that it definitely qualifies as one of Claude Berry's best films. It is a film that would have been more suitable for the 70s when complexity was still deemed desirable and tended to take precedence over uninterrupted action. Uranus is one of those war/post war films that one views once and never forgets, films such as "The Tin Drum", "The Grand Illusion", etc.
Claude Berri has given us some fine pictures in the past; this is one of his very best. Aymé's novel had been very cynical, Berri keeps the tone and adds some fiery acting by Depardieu as Leopold the doomed barkeeper to create a lovely film. Hiding a collaborator might have been the focal point of some other film, but here it's almost secondary to the vicious intrigue going on among Communists, Pétain fanciers and others who just want to survive. It's a delight to see Berri showing Rochard, the Communist stalwart who had denounced so many, reporting Leopold to the police as having given shelter to Maxime Loin, then Leopold hires Rochard to help him in the bar: very funny and very pointed satire.The performances are all so good. Michel Galabru as the oily, vicious Monglat, the profiteer whom everyone fears but whom everyone curries favor with is superb. Fabrice Luchini as the doctrinaire Communist Jourdan has hollow cheeks and horrible button eyes; he looks like one of the demented saints in El Greco's paintings. Michel Blanc as Gaigneux, the more realistic Party member, is solid--he not only wants to navigate the swift currents of politics, but is looking for love from Archambaud's daughter.
As a frenchman, I shouldnt' be too proud of how that film speaks about the behaviour of my compatriots of the 1940's. Where is the legendary courage of the french Resistance? Where is the french yearning after liberty and independance? "Uranus" shows us a bunch of average people, who wish just one thing: survive, re-build their lives and their town after the traumatism of the war. One of the great ideas of the novel and of the film is to have placed the plot directly AFTER the war. The Germans are gone, they can't be the enemy anymore! Now, the suspicion is turned towards the own neighbor! In that film, war isn't a question of honour or courage anymore. Before great values (like liberty or human rights), people fight for their lives. And after the war, the fight goes on among civilians, in a different manner. In this global suspicious atmosphere, everyone makes anybody else clear that he could send him to death if he revealed what he knows (about black market, collaboration with the occupant, "last-hour-resistants" and so on). This film puts France and WWII in a different light, which isn't very pleasant, but reflects far more the reality than the usual film production about that period. And besides...really great acting.
WWII left of lots of scars in French memory. Right after the war, all the French were supposed to have been freedom fighters, minus a few baddies of course. Then, slowly, a different truth started to emerge, and since the controversy has been raging on. Uranus, written by Marcel Aymé right after the war, was always controversial, as is this modern adaptation by Claude Berri. In this half-destroyed (by US bombings) French village in 1945, people try to have their lives back, or to save themselves : communists, drunks, sadistic late-hour partisans, former antisemitic hate-mongers, war profiteers... These characters may be too theoretical to be convincing, and of course the permanent blurring of the line between the good and bad guys is too systematic. However, the superior acting and the fact that the movie still manages to raise difficult issues (the general tone is very misanthropic), make it very compelling.
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