In the narrow trenches of the First World War, when the French soldier Adrian met the German soldier Franz, the two first looked at each other, wondering whether they would be killed by each other immediately, or whether they could let each other have a way to live, because Franz's eyes showed kindness and fear... But the rumbling of gunfire and the fierce wailing irritated Adrian's nerves, and after less than thirty seconds of hesitation, he finally raised his gun and killed Franz.
Adrian finds a letter on Franz's corpse that he wrote to his unmarried wife, detailing Franz's aversion to war, and he also finds that Franz's gun has no bullets at all! Guilty of his enemies, Adrian went to France after the war to find Franz's family at the address on the letter, seeking their forgiveness.
Franz's father was a doctor, his mother was a kind old lady, and there was only one son in the family, and his parents and his fiancée Anna were immersed in the grief of losing Franz all day long. When Adrian saw such a kind family, his heart was so guilty that he cried in front of the two old men, and the Franz family regarded Adrian as Franz's best friend when he studied in France. Adrian could not bear to tell them the truth, so he lied to the old man and told them about the happy years he and Franz had spent in France.
In the shared memories of the deceased, both the old man and Anna were temporarily comforted and delighted. As he got into contact with Franz's family, Adrian felt guilty and finally couldn't help but tell Anna the fact that he had shot Franz, and then returned to France.
In fact, in these days of contact, Anna has unconsciously fallen in love with this fiancé's close friend, but when she suddenly knows the truth, her inner shock and contradiction can be imagined. But for the sake of the two old people's newly relieved mood, she also chose to carry this lie to the end, telling the old man that Adrian had something to say goodbye to at home. Later, at the persuasion of the old man, Anna decided to go to France herself to find Adrian, telling him to his face that the family had forgiven him and intended to show Adrian her heart. But after several trips, she went to Adrian's house, only to find that Adrian was already planning to marry a French girl...
That's the story of the movie "Franz." The whole film is shot in black and white tones, this technique is actually not uncommon, such as "Schindler's List", "Nun Ada", "Nanjing, Nanjing", "The Devil is Coming", etc., no color represents the sadness of death, when encountering memories of the past or happy scenes, the film switches to the color picture, which is a typical contrast rendering, with the rendering of tones to reflect the emotional gap.
The same contrast also appears in the people who drink in the taverns of Germany and France, because the war has just ended, many people have lost their relatives in the war, and the French and Germans in the folk hate each other, so when the people who drink in the tavern see the former enemy people coming to the tavern to eat, they will sing the national anthem to express their inner resentment. When a German comes to France, he suffers the same unfriendly gaze as a Frenchman who goes to Germany, and this is also what Anna understood after going to France alone to find Adrian, and the reason why she can forgive Adrian in her heart is also because she sincerely admires Adrian's courage to admit his mistakes, and to summon up this courage to confess his mistakes in the family of the enemy country, at least it shows that this person's heart is good.
As Franz's father said to the fathers who had lost their sons in the tavern: "On the battlefield our sons killed the sons of the French, and here we drink beer to celebrate the death of their victorious enemies; just as when the sons of the French kill our sons, they will also drink to celebrate." We were drinking to each other to celebrate the death of each other's son! Were it the French who killed our son? Who encouraged them to go to war, who provided them with guns and ammunition? It's those of us who are fathers! ”
The old actor who plays the father here is extremely infectious, and the indictment of war by a father who has lost his son is vivid and moving. Therefore, the trauma brought by war to human beings is far more than just physical, but more spiritual. When a soldier dies on the battlefield, his departure is an incurable grief for a family, and his death is just a cold "1" in official documents.
We often say that "the brave win when the narrow road meets", and when Adrian shoots Franz in the trenches, Adrian's spiritual torment and redemption have just begun. If it weren't for the war, the two young men might have become true friends, not strangers who would have died for a lifetime.
The film is very artistic, combining poetry, music and painting in one, the film's recurring Manet famous painting "Suicide", in fact, is also a metaphor: Adrian seems to have survived on the battlefield, but his soul is tortured in death, like a chronic suicide; and Anna after losing her fiancé, she met a person who could make her heart move, but found that this person was actually the murderer of her fiancé, and the moral and emotional contradictions tortured her heart, is not it also a kind of chronic suicide?
So she chose to stay in France instead of returning to Germany, probably because she couldn't face Franz's parents. Heroine Paula. Bell (and Rene Liu's temperament is very similar) acted very well, seemingly expressionless, but can make the audience feel her inner changes and entanglements, worthy of the French film queen. When Adrian bid anna farewell on the platform, he kissed her, and Anna finally understood that Adrian loved her too, but everything was meaningless, so Anna would say to him, "It's too late!" "Or life is like this, when we sometimes know what we want, but for various objective reasons we are powerless to make any changes, watching the rainbow in the sky disappear little by little, we can only remember the last beauty and become a memory."
(Haichen, an active military officer, has loved to write since childhood, published more than 10 million words of various articles, won many awards for many works, and published a collection of novels.) ）