Partisan (2015)

The movie provides a safety of anonymity over its characters by never giving away the location of the setting, an isolated dream taking place beyond the pale of society with its own mechanism, but sometimes a lucid dream gives life to what is kept in the deep hollows of the collective consciousness.Alexander, a young boy of sensibility, lives among a community of children and women overseen by just one man, Gregori. The film documents the manipulation that takes place as the group exist to function for a cause of its own and juxtaposes the fanaticism, of a controlled and ultimately an abusive nature, with the open wonder of the innocence of childhood.The mechanisms of Oedipal crisis is at work and Alexander opens his eyes to the world around him, made significant with the arrival of a baby brother. However, the much debated theme, commonly based on the Freudian concept of repressed sexuality, makes its transition much quicker to the stages of puberty and adulthood as the boy begins to realize his actions must now carry the consequences of social responsibility, or the lack thereof. The film ends abruptly to prevent something really serious from happening. Instead, it leaves us on a poignant note of a scene, reminding us of Ezekiel 25:17, with boy Alexander emanating a plea for deliverance through his being as he stares down the only responsible man in his eyes.Dream-like, painstaking and most certainly a unique film experience that's put the young director on my radar.

This movie makes no sense. We are never told why children are used as assassins. Gregori seems to treat the children well, but on the other hand, he has trained them as baby hit-men. There may indeed be evil people outside the compound — we see that all around us in the world we live in now, so why are the people killed chosen to be executed? What have they done to deserve to be executed?How can Alexander justify killing Gregori? If Alexander kills Gregori what sort of a monster will he be as he grows older?If you like watching meaningless movies posing as deep thinking, this could be for you. If not avoid this one. You'll be left with nothing more than a wasted 98 minutes.

The story looks much like the child soldiers found in Latin America or Africa. But this movie took it a little bit farther by adding the exclusive enclave Gregori sets up and the whole harem of desperate women. Being told from Alexander's point of view, the movie sure look bleak with only the scenes from the enclave dominant throughout the duration. But this gives the movie ample space to show the breadth of the main problem character in Gregori. The acting overall is a great job, mainly for Vincent Cassel's work. His acting here is great, intimidating at all his scenes, even on the relatively laid-back ones. Jeremy Chabriel played his role well enough to keep the child perspective believable. Unfortunately the presentation wasn't tat good as the movie paces very slowly with much of it's duration covering non-essentials too much. The thriller moments are also found seldom.

I'm a fan of the actor Vincent Cassel so that was enough to get me to go see the movie. He plays a cult-like leader of a small hidden society made up of woman and children in a dystopian future, when his warp Mister Rodgers charms is not working on one of the boys it threatens to untangle what he created. Past this, I could not tell you what the movie was about. Though they gave some clues of what cause whatever apocalypse they were living in, most of what's going on is left to the imagination.So the movie relies on the abilities of Cassel and his interaction with his strange tribe of children. It was noteworthy to see the emotional conflict bouncing back and forth with Cassel to the rest of the cast. Especially, the lead boy who basically is realizing that the life these people are leading is wrong and not for him, and it's setting him aside from his mother. It can be very distracting from the fact that the movie has a plot I don't fully understand. But I did like it.