The second part of La Bataille de Gaulle – J’écris ton nom raises questions about Pathé’s artistic and commercial ambitions for such a project.
What happened with La Bataille de Gaulle? How could Pathé’s double-giga-mega blockbuster miss its release so badly? Between the disappointing numbers of The Iron Age and the botched advance of I Write Your Name as of June 26, we must revisit this strategic issue, because it underpins a duo of films that can’t seem to decide what footing to take, as we’ll detail in this two-part critique.
Caught between its ambition to mount an epic, heritage-spanning fresco and a somewhat critical look at the General’s figure, Antonin Baudry’s diptych (Le Chant du loup) struggles to carve out a distinct identity, to the point of letting the editing chain together the plot’s twists and turns like a Wikipedia entry chasing a chimera-like exhaustiveness.
