My favorite exploration of “The Lost Generation”, because it both humanizes and blames the WWI era for the romantic despair with which they lived after the “Great War”.
Who could blame Jules, Jim, or Catherine for seeking deeper pleasures and meaning, after their world had been blown apart. Who could’ve foreseen that nihilist attitude morphing into such horrors in their own lives and the world beyond.
Nostalgia coats this film in its sickly sweet seduction, with time collapsing around old friends no matter the years or outside world. But with no future, there is no future. And for Jim and Catherine - and Europe itself, the dreams of 1912 have been incinerated in ovens.
Our own liberal era is closing. Are we too doomed to be borne ceaselessly into the past forever?
An all-time favorite.
Great movie.