Boom-Bang-a-Beung

As a long-time partaker of the wonder and glory that is the Eurovision Song Contest, I have to admit that it has changed over the years, and not necessarily for the better. I’m not necessarily referring to the influx of vast numbers of formerly Soviet countries, although this has obviously had an effect, but some of the other little rule changes along the way. I speak, of course, of the change in rules that means that these days everyone is allowed to sing their song in English, regardless of whether or not it’s a dominant language in their country or not. You might think this was an absolute positive, and I suppose in terms of simple comprehension it has something to commend it. But what it has robbed the world of are the many creative solutions different countries found to the problem of how to write a song which connects to a vast audience which doesn’t share their native tongue.

This is, of course, gibberish. (I mean that the solution is gibberish, not the preceding paragraph, though I admit this is probably open to debate.) I direct you to such classic Eurosong entries as 1975’s Ding-a-Dong, 1968’s La La La La, 1969’s Boom-Bang-a-Bang, and 1967’s Ring-Dinge-Ding. The best way, it seems, to write a song which makes sense to the whole of Europe, is to write a song which only marginally makes sense at all. And I think the world is lessened just a little by the fact that this sort of thing doesn’t really go on any more.

Having said that, of course, the question of how to connect to a wide audience in a world without a common language is a real one, and one solution that several people have discovered and rediscovered over the years is to dispense with language entirely. Michel Hazanavicius scored a big international hit five years ago with his faux-silent movie The Artist, although he seems to have struggled a bit to convert this into continued international success. It’s interesting to compare his career with that of another notable French film-maker who also came to prominence with a black-and-white, effectively silent movie, and went on to forge a significant, if not entirely respectable, career: Luc Besson, whose first full-length film as director was 1983’s Le Dernier Combat (E-title: The Final Battle).

The film takes place in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, with buildings reduced to ruins and the countryside replaced by a blasted desert. Quite how this has come to pass is never really explained, mainly because whatever catastrophe has befallen the world has also robbed people of the ability to communicate – writing and even speech seems to be beyond most people, without chemical assistance anyway.

Naturally, with this sort of premise, there’s a limit to how much back-story you can give the characters. Chief amongst these is a man known only as the Man (Pierre Jolivet), who as the story opens is trying to complete a home-made plane, presumably so he can escape from the wasteland and find his way to somewhere better (the temptation to start ascribing motives and goals to these characters is almost impossible to resist, as you can see). The local gang of survivors present some difficulties, but eventually he completes his project and flies off.

Elsewhere, a semi-derelict hospital is under siege, if you can call it that when the attacking force only consists of one man. He is the Brute (Jean Reno), and the reason why he is so keen to get access is not immediately apparent – but his persistent efforts are the source of much dismay to the one remaining doctor (Jean Bouise) living in the building. When the Man’s plane makes a forced landing in the vicinity, he finds himself drawn into the struggle between the Brute and the occupants of the hospital. But in this bleak and violent world, is there any chance that basic human compassion can survive?

If I was the sort of person who went around wrangling comparisons between films, Le Dernier Combat would give me lots of material to work with. But, of course, I’ve sworn off that sort of thing. So to describe it as being very much in debt to Mad Max 2, with perhaps a delicate seasoning of Alphaville, is not something I would ever find myself in danger of doing. Nevertheless, this is obviously another of those decaying society/barbarism in the ruins sort of films. It’s a little unclear whether the decision to shoot in black and white is a stylistic choice or one forced on the film-makers by the meagreness of their budget, but the film looks as good as a well-photographed black and white movie always does. I’m not quite sure, but I suspect this may be one of those films which started off low-budget but then received an injection of cash just to get it ready for release – the production was apparently originally designed to make cost-effective use of the large number of ruined and derelict buildings dotted around Paris in the early 1980s, but the final product also includes scenes filmed in Tunisia, and at least one striking VFX shot (the office building standing incongruously in the middle of the desert).

The no-dialogue gimmick is a reasonably good one and does at least mean that Le Dernier Combat travels better than many French movies – one notes that as his career progressed, Besson eventually accepted the inevitable and started making films in English. However, I found the movie had the same problem as, say, your typical Hammer dinosaur movie – by dispensing with dialogue, it becomes incredibly difficult to have more than a fairly simplistic plot, with only rudimentary characters and virtually no humour.

Of course, many people would argue (a bit unfairly, if you ask me) that simplistic plots and rudimentary characters have been Luc Besson’s stock in trade throughout his career ever since. Are there some inklings of his future success to be derived from this movie? Is there something essentially Bessonian about it?

Well, apart from the presence of Jean Reno and music from Eric Serra – both of whom went on to become regular presences in the Besson rep company – there may be a few indicators. Besson is a noted writer and producer of headbanging action movies by the skip load, but many of the films he’s actually directed have either definitely been SF or carried a faint whiff of it about them. The opening shot of this movie is up there in the surreality stakes, including a deserted office, a partially-constructed plane (in the actual office), and a man disporting himself with an inflatable rubber woman (no one does brazen, lunatic excess quite like Besson). And there is something unreconstructedly blokey about it – all the main characters are male, with women kept largely off-camera as objects of desire. Which isn’t to say that Besson movies don’t feature interesting female characters, but they do tend to be impossibly glamorous ass-kicking babes.

So, anyway… Le Dernier Combat is an interesting movie, and you have to admire the invention that’s gone into it, but it’s very obviously the director’s first time doing this sort of thing. As you might expect, the story is a little slow and not very much happens, but it looks good and the storytelling is solid. Definitely an interesting movie for fans of low-fi SF and Besson himself.