Since 1948, thanks to Merton and Lazarsfeld, we have been aware of the narcotic effect of the media, highlighted in their notion of ‘narcotic dysfunction,’ which paralyses citizens’ reasoning and impacts their public decisions, such as war. Sorry, but the avant-garde style doesn’t stop people from falling into the cliché of thinking that you need a lab and syringes to brainwash citizens to stop them from enlisting or, even worse, to ‘kill anyone,’ as they keep saying.

The style may refer to the French Nouvelle Vague, such as Godard or Resnais, or even Claude Jutra, due to its fragmentary and indeterminate nature, which leaves us wondering whether it is a drama or a dramatised documentary. Even so, the semantic content of the script is far from profound as a critique, as can be seen from the laboratory, or the girl in a baby doll or negligee who acts as a nurse for Garou. I understand that this film was quite enthusiastic in appropriating, in a certain way, the premises that Harun Farocki highlighted in his protest at EXPRMNTL 4 (1967) in Knokke-le-Zoute, where the German questioned experimentation without activist commitment or denunciation of the bourgeoisie. However, I insist that the accusation of state manipulation to train and recruit for the war industry is rather weak.

Nevertheless, I liked in this film what might bother a good part of the audience, such as the fact that the director prepared scenes with inexperienced personnel who were not familiar with cinema. See, for example, the bus scene where Garou gets off and all the passengers applaud in unison, with the middle-aged woman and others in the front seats even laughing apart from the plot, as if they had just been recruited off the street for the scene. The same happens with several passages that show Garou’s resistance.

I like the scene where Mouffe sings, which reminds me of David Lynch because we are never sure whether there is mockery – and therefore criticism – of narratives that glorify the happy couple with children (Garou’s girlfriend asks him for one) and even with their pet in the snow, or if there is simply a conformism that goes hand in hand with Garou’s apparent resignation to the weight of the system that absorbs him, as seen in the factory.