Days of Glory (Indigenes)

Though the English title is more than a little misleading, there is an element of “Saving Private Sayeed” in this story of a small unit of soldiers taking back Europe step by step from the Nazis. The wrinkle of Rachid Bouchareb’s film is ironically alluded to in the French title, which properly means “Natives” -- that the soldiers liberating the “motherland” of France are Arabs from its North African colonies. Though not without Spielbergesque underlining, Bouchareb’s direction is meticulous and his point well taken. It was clearly an act of cultural and historical recovery for him and the actors, who as an ensemble won an award at Cannes -- and had an impact to the extent of convincing Chirac to restore the pensions of French soldiers in the now-free colonies. The military action is very well rendered, the characters well delineated, and the issues too. The impulse, however, is celebratory rather than angry, focused more on the valor and camaraderie of the good fight, than on the futility of war and empire. I figured we would wind up with any survivors fighting against the French in the Algerian War, but instead we postscript 60 years later at a military cemetery in Alsace. Still, this is an honorable effort all round, an action flick with a heart, a war movie with a brain. (2006, dvd, n.) *8* (MC-82.)