Main Cast: Philippe Noiret, Sabine Azéma, Pascale Vignal, Maurice Barrier, Francois Perrot
Release Year: 1989
Country: FR
Run Time: 135 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG
Plot
The grim post-World War I era in Europe is grist for director Bertrand Tavernier's mill in Life and Nothing But. Philipe Noiret portrays a French major who is supervising the gruesome task of counting and identifying the corpses still strewn over the battlefield. Noiret is obsessed with the notion that, by doing his job above and beyond the call of duty, he can somehow make up for the carnage in which he participated a few years earlier. The major's mission is intercut with short vignettes involving the families and loved ones of the dead, and with the efforts by another officer to find a suitable candidate for an Unknown Soldier testimonial. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
World War I not only killed and crippled, it also stole, robbing untold thousands of soldiers of their identities. This 1989 Bertrand Tavernier film tells the story of a French army officer, Major Dellaplane, charged with restoring the identities of 350,000 dead or shell-shocked Frenchmen. As Dellaplane toils, Tavernier holds a mirror to postwar France. And what the viewer sees is revolting. Profiteering sculptors offer to immortalize soldiers in stone. Quick-find merchants promise to ferret out rotting corpses. Worst of all, bigwig bureaucrats promote national glory by ordering Dellaplane to certify a soldier -- any soldier -- as "unknown" to meet the deadline for enshrining a nameless warrior in France's tomb of the unknown soldier, the Arc de Triomphe. Dellaplane must deliver an unidentified corpse even if he and his staff have the wherewithal to eventually identify the soldier. Philippe Noiret portrays Dellaplane brilliantly. Outwardly, he is dispassionate, abrupt, and cold. Inwardly, he is fiercely dedicated to his task. Men who fell in battle for their country deserve at least a name, he believes. While probing for information, Dellaplane meets two women -- Alice (Pascale Vignal), who is searching for her husband, and Irène (Sabine Azéma), who is searching for her fiancé. When Dellaplane tells Irène the fate of her beloved -- and who he really was -- the shock devastates her. As for Alice, Dellaplane falls in love with her, but does not reveal his feelings until his job is done and she is more than 4,000 miles away. La Vie et Rien d'Autre succeeds as an antiwar film, one that calls attention to a rarely chronicled part of war -- the aftermath. ~ Mike Cummings, All Movie Guide
Set in October 1920, it tells the story of Major Dellaplane, a man whose job is to find the identities of unknown dead soldiers after World War I. Dellaplane forms a relationship with a woman who is looking for her missing husband, but a dilemma begins when he learns that her husband may still be alive. The movie is a sensitive examination of the deep psychological scars left behind by the Great War, clear of sentiment yet with delicately nuanced irony.
