The Last Flight

This is just a visually beautiful film. It's amazing to watch and see the landscape expand before the characters. The beginning is fast paced and lots of things happen, including lots of dialogue. By the end there is less and less of this, although it doesn't take away from the film because the desert has become a character and it's presence is acutely felt. Spellbinding!

A tragic story told from the camel's (he's the hero) point of view. Moral: don't go into the Sahara without the Tauregs on your side. I love Marion Cotillard, Canet has talent, the director had an idea to glorify the tribal values and explore the vicious futility of the French colonialists. However, that did not make a good movie. Like Babel that never did achieve the goal intended, The Last Flight never got airborne. So far, only Casablanca, Battle of Algiers, The Wind and the Lion and Bertolucci's The Sheltering Sky have survived a trip to the desert and returned with an entertaining film. This began with the high flying hopes of Out of Africa but crashed like the plane Marion Cotillard is searching for. They went almost the whole film before we even saw one sip of water by man or camel. Amazing. It could have been a great love story. That got told a little near the end, when they were down to their last two camels. The Tauregs had the right idea. They left early. I was hoping to at least see the bad French Captain get killed by the enemy. We were denied that event. They needed a makeup person who could have made Marion look less refreshed by the end. They were near-death but her face as full and lovely, even with small flies all about it, but not worn, tired, sand or sun burnt. Just endless sand dunes and very slow-moving camels. I guess they knew only one of them was going to make it to the end.

This film is just a continuation of the French propensity to create films in which nothing happens but a lot of supposedly profound dialogue. Continuing in the ( hopefully forgotten) genre of Truffaut, this film has no climax, no denouement, no conclusion and no story. So Marie is looking for her lover in the Sahara who has vanished there. The idea of search grids has obviously never occurred to the director Karim Dridi; neither has the need for maintenance requirements for such a fragile airplane. So the intrepid Marie somehow files around the Sahara in a 1930's biplane with no need for logistical support (i.e. fuel, water, food) and with no idea of her lover's location while cajoling the French Foreign Legion to help her out. In its very concept, this film was nonsensical and almost comical but does admirably continue the intellectual pretensions of many French filmmakers.

great performance of Marion Cotillard and Guillaume Canet. A must see movie! And you can realize how Marion is a great actress....

This is a terrific movie starring one of the greatest stars working in Hollywood today and the winner of Best Actress at the Oscars for La Vie en Rose. She teams up here with Guillaume Canet in a luscious and romantic film reminiscent of The English Patient or Lawrence of Arabia. A treat for true movie fans and Marion's best movie you haven't seen yet! I can't believe we had to wait three years to finally see this masterpiece released in the US!