Beau Travail: Crisp Clothing and the Meaning of Life
Clothing Makes The Man in Claire Denis' 1999 Masterpiece, Beau Travail
Warning: Spoilers ahead. If you haven’t seen this foreign independent film and don’t wish to have it spoiled, turn away!
When Beau Travail (Translated to "Beautiful Work") premiered in the fall of 1999, the film grossed $570,000 worldwide at the box office. In comparison Spiderman: Across the Spider-Verse netted $208,000,000 in its opening weekend. Adjusted for inflation, Beau Travail would earn $1.038M today, less than 1% of what Spiderman made in one weekend. While the film remained in relative obscurity in relation to some of the bigger films of the year (Star Wars: Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace was the highest-grossing film of the year with a box office take home of $431m), it was universally critically acclaimed earning a 91/100 on critical aggregator Metacritic. Beau Travail debuted on the BFI’s Sight and Sound list of the greatest films of all time at #78 in 2012, rising all the way up to #7 on the latest iteration of the list released last year. Many would call me insane for this, but I can go as far as saying it might be the third-best movie ever after Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and Fellini’s La Dolce Vita in my humble opinion. Regardless, you get the point. It’s lauded as one of the greatest films of all time, though even today it isn’t a widely known film to the masses.
Drawing heavily from Billy Budd, a novella written by the great Herman Melville, the story follows a troop of French Foreign Legionnaires as they complete military training exercises in the Republic of Djibouti, a former French colony located in northeastern Africa. By day, they partake in grueling, rigorous military training under the harsh beating African sun. By night, they visit local watering holes and dance with beautiful women living in the nearby villages. There is no war, no looming threat over anyone’s head. Simply put, they don’t need to be there.
The story is centered around three characters: Sergent Galoup (Denis Levant), a tough military leader who lives his life by strict routine, his commander Bruno Forestier (Michel Subor), whom Galoup holds in high esteem, and a young, handsome soldier named Gilles Sentain (Grégorie Colin), whose quiet nature evokes a feeling of mystique around him. The central conflict of the story arises when Sentain gains instant admiration from his peers. He keeps his clothing creaseless and stiff, completes all exercises, and puts the needs of the group ahead of his own. He is the perfect soldier, loved by the fleet of troops, which threatens Galoup’s control and fills him with jealousy.
Galoup narrates the story, recounting the events that took place in the African desert some days and weeks prior. The audience knows that his world comes crashing down from the start of the film, but we're glued to our seats as we watch it all unravel. We see Galoup, tough and masculine, leading the rigorous drills (Claire Denis said in an interview that one of the actors was a real Legionnaire and that he taught the cast how to perform all of the military exercises, so what you see in the film is true to the Legionnaire experience) while never cracking so much as a smile. Even in the scenes in the club late at night, Galoup never breaks his straight-faced serious expressions despite spending his nights and mornings with the beautiful Marta Tafesse Kassa, whose character is never given a name. Galoup appears to originally be tortured by the idea that he is not as well respected by his men as Forestier, who comes across as stoic, a man of few words who always has a cigarette in his mouth.
Galoup unravels further when Gilles Sentain, a mysterious young soldier enters the troup, immediately gaining respect and admiration from his peers. In a scene that you'll usually only catch if you've seen the film multiple times, while Galoup dances with Marta's character near the beginning of the film, you see Sentain glide by, Marta's eyes following his body. Sentain is the ultimate foil to Galoup's character: he's younger and better looking, and while each of them possesses a certain quietness about them, you can sense Sentain's inner peace versus Galoup's turmoil. Halfway through the film Sentain rescues a comrade after a freak helicopter crash over an oasis and is hailed a hero, further sending Galoup into existential dread.
The movie comes to its climactic head after almost 75 minutes of tension between Galoup and Sentain. After Galoup mistreats a black soldier, Sentain comes to his defense, escalating into a physical altercation between the two men. Galoup, being the superior drives Sentain into the desert, abandoning him, leaving him to die. The rest of the group assumes that he abandoned his post and crossed the border into Ethiopia. Forestier throws Galoup out of the military and he returns home, exiled to Marseilles, France. Sentain is rescued by a Djiboutian family and we surmise he regains his health.
There's a scene earlier in the film where a group of soldiers are ironing their uniforms while Forestier watches on. "We're taught elegance in and under our uniforms," he says. "Perfect creases are part of the elegance." Galoup enters the scene and approves the soldiers' creases. Sentain then teaches another soldier, Russian, the French words for each piece of clothing.
In their world, the uniform is everything. It's their etiquette, their pride. Their world is one of discipline, where all of their movements must be precise. In the military, one wrong move can be the difference between life and death. There is no waste in their motion. Everything serves a purpose from their clothes to the manner in which they speak. It’s all driven from a place of discipline, precision, and respect. To break the rules is to disrespect them. The military may be one of the more extreme examples of this, but there are several versions of this in everyday society: police officers, firemen, medical personnel..even to a lesser degree anyone in corporate America who has to adhere to a dress code day-in, day-out.
The clothing is just a symbol of a much bigger entity. The garments we wear are a language; our clothes are constantly speaking to each other. The uniform tells the world the kind of person you are. The better you look, the better you feel, the better you’re treated. When you're obligated to wear a specific garments in a daily basis, it can also constrain you, gripping your body, and relieving you of some of your freedoms. Many of us are not allowed to wear whatever we want every day, an idea that we’ve all blindly accepted.
All of this leads to the greatest film ending I’ve ever seen. Galoup, depressed that his military dream is over, sits in a barren apartment overlooking Marseille. He grabs a pistol from his drawer and places it on his chest as he lies, staring at the ceiling. His left breast has a tattoo that reads "Sert la bonne cause et meurt" ("Serve the good cause then die"). The film cuts to a scene of Galoup alone, dressed in black, back in the nightclub in Djibouti. Timid at first, he dances to Corona's "Rhythm of the Night," becoming more animated, and looser as the music wears on to the point of near parody. Where earlier in the film, the movements are so precise, almost ballet-like in nature, there is no rhythm to Galoup's final dance. His movements peel back the layers of his armored exterior, giving way to his true nature. We see that he doesn't move like a soldier with an abundance of rhythm. His lack of fluid motion displays his freedom, a release that he’s been holding in for so long. He throws himself to the floor and rolls offscreen as the credits roll.
The most common interpretation of the film is that Galoup is a closeted gay man, hopelessly drawn towards Sentain. In a rejection of himself, Galoup mistreats Sentain, making him the subject of all of his subconscious rage. When Galoup is exiled from the Leigon, he's reduced to a bitter, haunted man who sees no choice out other than with his pistol.
There is no definitive interpretation of the ending ending; however. We never see Galoup point the gun toward himself. We don't know if the final dance in the Djiboutian club is a fantasy, a dream, or a version of the afterlife. We don't know if Galoup is homosexual or if he was jealous of Sentain all along. The film's ambiguity has mesmerized and sparked debate amongst viewers for almost 25 years.
There are over a dozen or so categories of film endings, but Beau Travail doesn't fall into any of them. It's an ambiguous ending sure, but it's also a release of tension. For almost an hour and a half, we feel Galoup's inner turmoil boil under the surface, and in the final seconds, his memories, desires, and pain all melt away, allowing for the final release in that club. We as an audience can finally breathe.
I've always viewed Beau Travail as a metaphor for how we live our lives. How many of us work jobs that we don't like so we can afford to pay rent and keep the lights on? We speak to colleagues and clients with our customer service voices. We wake up tired at the crack of dawn and do things we don't want to do all day just for an hour or two of relaxation at the end of the day and two days of peace on the weekend. The majority of us are not privileged with the luxury of total autonomy, agency, and free will. Sometimes we, like Galoup, want to dance like no one is watching.
As embarrassing as this may be to admit, I hadn't heard of Beau Travail until the Sight and Sound list was released in late 2022. It's the first film I watched after the list was released and I was so mesmerized by the ending that I watched the film over again that same night. It's been about 7 months since then and I've watched the ending dozens of times on YouTube. I've watched the film about 10 times. I'm brought to tears at the end every time. Great art affects us in ways we don't anticipate. I’m still mystified by the film to this day because I still cannot explain why the ending is so overwhelming. I've seen several films about people wanting to live out their dreams and be free, that haven't elicited that same emotion. I’m overcome with emotion watching how beautiful the ending is. When I watch Galoup, I see someone desperately trying to be free, trapped in a world he doesn't belong in. And that’s what great art does - it brings out emotions in us we didn’t know we had.
Beau Travail is one of the best films I've ever seen. I haven't even touched on the beautiful shots of the African landscape, or the long close-up shots of still faces that still manage to be full of depth & emotion. Not since 2001: A Space Odyssey has a movie said so much with very little. Everything the Leigon does is about precision and elegance, from the clothes they wear to the discipline in which they complete their training drills. In the midst of it, we see Galoup dealing with the internal struggles of juggling his desire for Forestier's approval with his obsession for Sentain - a feeling that leads to his ultimate destruction. It’s a beautiful movie about jealousy, desire, the inability to be oneself, the absurdity of war and so much more. I’ll always be in awe of how Claire Denis was able to say so much in a 90-minute runtime. In the end, if you strip away everything, it's a movie about the desperate emotions of wanting to be free, even if for a moment - the sweet rhythm of the night.
peace and love