{"id":14286,"date":"2013-09-12T03:10:15","date_gmt":"2013-09-12T02:10:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=14286"},"modified":"2013-09-12T03:11:12","modified_gmt":"2013-09-12T02:11:12","slug":"the-bunker-of-the-last-gunshots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2013\/09\/12\/the-bunker-of-the-last-gunshots\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bunker of the Last Gunshots"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"bunker1.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/bunker1.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Jean-Pierre Jeunet is known these days as a director in his own right but he started out working in collaboration with Marc Caro, a writing and directing partnership that lasted up to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0112682\/\" target=\"_blank\"><em>The City of Lost Children<\/em><\/a> in 1995. Given how much I enjoyed that film, and their earlier <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0101700\/\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Delicatessen<\/em><\/a> (1991), I suspect it&#8217;s Caro&#8217;s sensibility I respond to. I loathed Jeunet&#8217;s <em>Alien Resurrection<\/em> so much I refuse to watch it again (for me the <em>Alien<\/em> series ends with Ripley&#8217;s swan dive at the end of the third film), and I&#8217;ve shunned <em>Amelie<\/em> and everything he&#8217;s done since.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"bunker2.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/bunker2.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p><em>The Bunker of the Last Gunshots<\/em> (1981) is an early Caro\/Jeunet work set in the same retro environment as <em>Delicatessen<\/em> and <em>The City of Lost Children<\/em>, with equally eccentric or unpleasant characters and the same antiquated technology. There&#8217;s no dialogue, and the narrative is conveyed obliquely at best. Even more than their feature films this is a vehicle for conveying a mood, the concern here being less with story and more with monochrome visuals, chiaroscuro lighting and bits of grotesquery among the all-male inhabitants of a bunker from some unspecified war. For a low-budget piece it&#8217;s very assured, and if you&#8217;d seen this in 1981 you&#8217;d be expecting the pair to go on to bigger and better things. <em>The Bunker of the Last Gunshots<\/em> runs for 25 minutes; there&#8217;s a rough copy on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=NIpWJnwDb_k\" target=\"_blank\">YouTube<\/a> or a better one at <a href=\"http:\/\/vimeo.com\/4799558\" target=\"_blank\">Vimeo<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jean-Pierre Jeunet is known these days as a director in his own right but he started out working in collaboration with Marc Caro, a writing and directing partnership that lasted up to The City of Lost Children in 1995. Given how much I enjoyed that film, and their earlier Delicatessen (1991), I suspect it&#8217;s Caro&#8217;s &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2013\/09\/12\/the-bunker-of-the-last-gunshots\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;The Bunker of the Last Gunshots&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7,20],"tags":[5171,5172],"class_list":["post-14286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film","category-science-fiction","tag-jean-pierre-jeunet","tag-marc-caro"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-3Iq","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14286\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}