Story Threads: See You Up There

Eeeeeeh I'm back! It's been another year since the last post, so at least I am consistent with being late. Quick catch-up: I'm now married, will be working as a full-time reference librarian come the new year, and still love films. My writing is out of practice...bear with me, if you will. But hey, I changed the color theme on the blog, so at least that's somethin'.

"It's a long story. It's complicated."

—Albert Maillard

We've all heard the metaphor of a story being like a tapestry woven from many different threads. They come together to form a beautiful work of art, everything connected, each individual strand easy enough to follow when scrutinized independent of the others. The best works hold up when taken in from both vantages. Storytellers can create some masterfully complex tales, but at times I feel like they push the needle in the wrong direction. Sometimes a handful of threads—of connections—are forced for the sake of completing rather than complementing the whole. See You Up There is not alone in that regard, but it is regrettable all the same.

Rated 'tous publics'.
For those of us who did not take two years of French in high school,
just know that there's a teeny bit of nudity, war violence & injuries,
swearing, and a dude breathing into the maw of a freshly dead horse.

I still really enjoyed Au revoir là-haut; I decided to watch it in the first place because the trailer looked whimsical and gritty. I like whimsy! And grittiness! The film came out in France in 2017 and was nominated for/won a bunch of awards shortly thereafter. Based on a novel of the same name by Pierre Lamaitre and adapted/directed by Albert Dupontel (who also plays narrator and main character Maillard), this film is even lauded by the most critical of critics: Rotten Tomatoes.

A rundown of the plot: November 9th, 1918. War-glutton and très villainous Pradelle damns his battalion by sending them to their slaughter one day before armistice. During the battle, Edouard Péricourt (played by the very talented Nahuel Pérez Biscayart) saves Maillard from his premature burial only to be injured himself. Maillard, in turn, saves Edouard, only Edouard is horribly disfigured and wants to die. Not wanting to face his estranged family, he begs his newfound friend to remove his war record, thereby faking his death. Maillard obliges and sends Edouard off to a fancy hospital in Paris to get a prosthetic jaw, only the pretty boy is too good for that and decides to live as a half-faced freak instead. Fair do's. Maillard has some stuff to deal with on his own, mainly the fact that he saw Pradelle shoot two of their own back on the battlefield. What's worse, Pradelle KNOWS that Maillard knows, so when Edouard's loving sister Madeleine shows up to claim her brother's corpse, the two strike a deal to cover each other's asses in exchange for not ratting the other out.

A year goes by. Down-on-his-luck Maillard has come back to Paris and is taking care of Edouard, the mighty morphine addict who decides to wallow in self-pity while Maillard works a shitty job and steals drugs from disabled veterans in the name of friendship. They eventually decide to con the state—currently high on hero worship—into paying for elaborate cenotaphs which they never intend to build. See, Edouard is an amazing artist who hates his coldhearted father Marcel for pushing him into joining the war rather than into pursuing the life that he once wanted. Since both ex-soldiers are bitter about what they went through, the qualms about the con are few.

Also, Edouard wears masks now. Pfft, arty types.

Meanwhile, Pradelle is making money off of the improper burials of his fellow fallen soldiers. He is also connected to Edouard's father...precisely how is never made clear, but daddy Péricourt is rich and powerful and perturbed by his son's apparent death as well as their missed opportunity for reconciliation. Maillard, having lied to the Péricourt family about his friend's supposed death, again meets with Madeleine who, as it turns out, has married Pradelle. Whaaat. Edouard eventually finds out about this, falls deeper into depression, and takes his revenge on Pradelle by sending a state inspector after his macabre business. Maillard takes a job as a bookkeeper for Marcel and begins to steal money from the profiteers at his bank. Oh, also, in what I assume was an attempt to honor his late son, Marcel throws a contest to design a massive memorial with a grand prize of one hundred fifty thousand francs. Lo and behold, Edouard wins this competition under a false name, but Marcel is suspicious since lil' ol' Eddie still uses his original signature on all of his work. D'oh!

For glory?

There's a subplot with an orphan girl who becomes close to Edouard, another with a love interest for Maillard, but the main ending is as follows: Madeleine only married Pradelle to be with child and soon dumps his cheating ass (as if he weren't bad enough, the prick sleeps around). Maillard confesses his con to his rando lady-love then goes a bit nuts and 'accidentally' kills Pradelle by burying him alive with a horse mask (extreme irony, believe me). Marcel tracks down the artist who has conned so many as well as taken the prize money, realizes it is his son, and has a cathartic dialog with him. Edouard is pretty much out of his mind on morphine at this point but hugs his father before jumping off a building to his death. There is a 'second ending', which was dumb in that it tried to tie up loose ends by forcing events to come full circle, and unfortunately that is what left the largest impression on my mind. The threads of this story came together in too many ways. They got tangled up, and the tapestry wasn't ruined so much as made messier.

There are plenty of other things that this movie did really well, though. The idea that the fates of so many rest on the shoulders on a handful of influential idiots is as relevant now as it was during WWI. Maillard reasons that he did not speak up against Pradelle simply by shrugging and saying "Orders are orders," a mindset that has plagued many jingoistic nations throughout history. Even after all that he went through, he still had to refer to Pradelle as 'sir' for propriety's sake. It is this lack of willingness to go against the grain that spurs Maillard's decision to go off the deep end so wholeheartedly and take part in Edouard's plans. His actions are almost understandable with this in mind. After all, he openly admits, "All war taught me was to fight innocent men. So I did just that." The audience is all but cajoled into taking his side, too, given that his nemesis is such a scoundrel. I mean...early on, Pradelle skips across the graves of his comrades so as not to muddy his shoes (in a very literal sense).

What a wanker.

Similarly, the ever-present 'make art, not war' motto present throughout the film stuck some cords. For one, Edouard literally spoke through his art, although what he had to say was somewhat duplicitous. At times it was startlingly on point ('Vive la mort!), but when it came to his con, each memorial's patriotic title—from 'The Grateful Nation' and 'Joy in Battle' to 'Thanks for Everything' and 'Proud to Die'—followed quickly by a price tag and his own chortling made it obvious that his creations were a complete farce. They still fooled pretty much everybody, though, which is the point. "Publicity for death," as Edouard would say. These characters are bitter, and a touch mad, and it shows. For instance, when Madeleine comes to invite Maillard to a family dinner and share memories of Edouard, she states simply, "You were with my brother when he died." Edouard, not knowing that she is right outside his abode, has a laughing fit with the orphan girl Louise. The action is absurd given the circumstances, and even Maillard is aghast as he tries to provide the appropriate cover to the unknowing Madeleine. It's those subtleties which give me life, not the big signposts displaying the words 'See? Look here! Isn't what we did clever?' that make up the vast majority of this story.

I legit love these two, tho. <3

So, did I like this film despite its unnecessary complexities? Yeah, actually, a lot. The 'whimsy' I wrote of earlier is very French in nature and reminded me of Amélie and Mood Indigo, at least with the cinematography and aesthetics if not exactly story-wise. I especially like Edouard's friendship with Louise and how it illuminates the large part of him that never grew up. She accepts him with innocence, but of course things are never that simple. Edouard is a complex creature, one who decries his father's lifestyle yet thrives only on opulence. At one point he makes a mask out of paper bills, and his final visage is that of a peacock. You can draw your own conclusions about that symbolism.

An artist with his head in the clouds, or just a wasteful fop? You decide!

Maillard recognizes this trait in his friend but takes it in stride. "I told Edouard I had a job. He didn't ask where. Rich people think others ought to work." It seems that only the rich can afford to be whimsical, eh? Edouard has no idea—or, more likely, does not care to understand—what is involved to keep his lifestyle going. He came up with the grand plan, but like so many geniuses he does not care about the smaller details. Maillard's job enables them to run their con by obtaining the funds to print up catalogs, open bank accounts under false names without raising suspicion, make large withdrawals of cash, etc. Edouard takes everything for granted. It is also his hubris as an artist that tips off his father about the identify of the man behind the mask. His sister Madeleine acts similarly, using Pradelle as it suits her only to toss him aside when she is done with him...although the asshole absolutely deserved it, no doubt about that. See You Up There raises these issues of classism, at two points giving the audience a glimpse of the upstairs v. downstairs mentality that so permeated the era during which the story takes place (Marcel talking down to Maillard on the landing as he offers him a job, Padelle smoking halfway down the same stairway after he is left low by Madeleine's harsh but true words). This was overt, and even though the audience does not have to dig deeply to understand what is being said, the message itself is fairly timeless.

I was never any good at writing conclusions. Ta-da! Le fin. See you next year, maybe. ;)

For further information:

• See You Up There on IMDb