One of the best sci fi movies ever produced. The cast embodies the essence of normal rural folks, how they deal with an unfathomable situation.
The acting is top notch and captures the reality of rural life in a small french village last century.
It is very disturbing and illustrates how civilisation collapses without a social contract.
Plot summary
In southern France, in a quaint little town, the mayor, who also owns a castle with some cattle, is in the wine cellar with some other people--the pharmacist, the veterinary, and some of his employees. As they are drinking wine, they hear a terrible noise and the heat's getting higher and higher. They don't realize what's happening: when they come out of the cellar, they realize that everything has burned, and all the buildings are destroyed.
Uploaded by: FREEMAN
Director
Top cast
Jean-Louis Trintignant as Fulbert
Movie Reviews
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A truly superb post apocalyptic sci fi movie
Reviewed by
Part very good, part really bad. A nuclear apocalypse as seen through the eyes of French villagers from the 80's.
By now you've seen it all before, but in the 80s, several films like this appeared, banking on the fears of the possibility of a very real nuclear war and they felt fresh. Funny how that wheel turns, heh, 2022?
Anyway, some people are in a wine cellar when a nuke blows their village away. They manage to survive and then they meet the "others" which of course are antagonistic. They solve the problem, but then, instead of going full The Walking Dead, the film goes in another direction. I found that ending added a lot to the film, although it was kind of subtle.
While some scenes are very good, some lines really deep and the dark exploration of human nature in times of crisis quite realistic, I couldn't really enjoy the slow pace, the mentally handicapped 30 year old and his almost senile mother or the religious cult controlled by an evil nobody who created the drama. Trintignant was always good, but he couldn't make this shine.
Funny enough there seems to be a 2009 remake, also French, which almost didn't see the light of day. It was released directly to TV in France after4 years from its completion. I don't know if the book is any better, but from what I read, it's better to just watch this 1981 film instead.
Bottom line: a combination of good acting and nice writing, but marred by a slow pace and really unsympathetic characters.
Reviewed by
Clumsy sci-fi.
Check the title :it's the best thing the film has to offer:a word made of two words "mal " (French) and "evil" (English) which have the same meaning.
It was intended to be "rural" sci-fi without a Charlton Heston type hero.The problem lies in the fact that the movies with Heston ("planet of the apes" of course" but also "the omega man" and "solyent greeen") are damn better than the pitiful French attempt.The cast is not very exciting (Jacques Villeret is not efficient as a drama actor and Jacques Dutronc is a singer,as the precedent user says ,this does not make him an actor for all that).The post apocalyptic future was already a hackneyed subject at the time and the conclusion is clumsy ,unsatisfying ,it takes no chances ,raises no questions does not appeal or repel.
Word to the wise:2 Christian de Challonges movies are much more interesting :"l'alliance" (1970) and "le bel été 14"(1996) and too bad if their ratings are lower.Wait and see.