That's Not the Point

There is no glory in war. I know that. I don't know it first hand, of course, but I've been taught over and over throughout the years by study of war after war that there is nothing glorious, nothing to be sought after in man's conflict against man. That said, studying WWI drives that home to me more poignantly than any other conflict. Maybe it's the dull waiting of the stale-mated trenches. Maybe it's the bleakness of no-man's land. Maybe it's the devastation and inescapability of mustard gas. Or something else. I don't know.

Art inspired by "In Flanders Feilds" by John McRae

No one knew. WWI was a war that came at the end of a line of dominoes. No one knew why anyone was fighting, really. And it dragged on. It got messy. It became big. Broken. Incomprehensible. I can't say that I've studied WWI in depth, but every brush I've had with it through art or film or literature has left me with a longing to understand. It seems to pour out of the souls of everyone who was involved in the conflict, either directly or indirectly. "Why? Why did this happen? Why did we allow this to destroy so many lives?"

"A Very Long Engagement" speaks to that longing for truth. It's a beautiful movie that embraces the Romantic ideal of letting some things be too big to be resolved. The heroine, Mathilde, sets herself on a seemingly impossible journey to find the truth of what happened to her fiance in the war. She follows her heart. She leads with her irrationality, and it leads her to rational discovery upon rational discovery. That was actually one of my favorite parts of the film. At crucial moments, when everything seemed to be suspended in uncertainty, hovering over the void of crushing disappointment, Mathilde would seek the truth in the mundane. She'd say to herself, "If my dog comes in before dinner is ready, then there's still hope." She'd wait. Often, the parameters she'd set for her hope wouldn't be filled. But she'd keep going.

She wanted her fiance to be alive. That was her driving purpose. But it wasn't the point. The point was finding the truth. Mathilde hardly wasted time asking "why". She accepted that "why" was too big. To incomprehensible. "What" was what concerned her, and it was the only thing that mattered. The truth could have been hideous, and often was, it wouldn't matter. She needed to know.

Nothing was really resolved at the end of the film. The war had still ruined the lives of almost everyone depicted. People were dead. Holes were blown in reality. Nobody had any answer for why any of it had happened. But resolution wasn't the point. Mathilde found the truth. One unknowable became known,though it was at the price of uncovering a thousand more unanswerable questions. Nothing was fixed. But that was fine. Fixing things wasn't the point.

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