I want very much to see Snakes on a Plane and Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, so I feel pretentious to be discussing Overlord, a 1975 WWII drama about one soldier’s journey to the beaches of Normandy. It contains an impressive amount of real stock footage woven into the storyline, including Nazi newsreels, British propaganda films, and films of Allied troops practicing for D-day. Overlord was never officially released in America, but its reputation has earned it screenings at festivals and in arty film houses like the Brattle.
Boston’s Restaurant Week – which is actually two weeks and no Fridays or Saturdays – is in full swing. Scores of upscale eateries are offering prix fixe menus – $20.06 for lunch, and $30.06 for dinner. Not exactly cheap, but you can breath easier during the meal knowing that all those $14 apps and desserts won’t result in an eye-popping check and subsequent indigestion. It’s a good excuse to go to special occasion places like Sandrine’s Bistro in Harvard Square, even if the only special occasion is Restaurant Week.
Overlord, which was the code name for the hush-hush D-day plans, centers around a young British man named Tom who is “called up,” a fate he accepts with nervous resignation. From the day he leaves his doting parents to become a soldier, he has recurring, fatalistic dreams of getting killed during battle. At boot camp, there are the typical “getting yelled at a lot while navigating obstacle course” scenes. He has a sweet, shy encounter with a young woman at a dance. He polishes his shoes in the barracks with the other privates while the drill sargeant yells at them some more: “Why do we polish our shoes? TO IMPRESS THE FRENCH.”
Sandrine’s is a French restaurant with a bar, hence it is a cozy yet gorgeous bistro. The cook hails from Strasbourg, and since we had just been there in June, Mr. Pinault and I were delighted to see paintings of the town all around the restaurant. Sandrine’s Resturant Week appetizers are a little chinzty: Soup (Chilled Cucumber Vichyssoise) or salad (Sheep’s Milk Feta Curds with mesclun greens)? Compare this to their “normal” appetizers, seductively listed on the prix fixe menu as upgrades: Crab Gazpacho (add $8), Escargot (add $10), and Fois gras (add $15). I resented Sandrine’s for tempting me to deviate from the prix fixe menu. The salad was tasty and fresh, but its plainness seemed to emphasize that I was depriving myself of fois gras. What if I die tomorrow, and I chose salad over fois gras to save $15?
Overlord was not quite what I expected. Because of moviemakers like Steven Spielberg – who must have seen this movie – I imagined a “storming the beach” scene with mass death and carnage. But this movie manages to scale the largest-ever military offensive involving over 3 million men to concern only one man, Tom, who is only ever certain of one thing: He will die.
The Seared Loin of Tuna with seasonal vegetable macedoine and spicy rouille was not quite what I expected. The tuna was done perfectly, with a quarter-inch of cooked meat flanking the otherwise raw steak. It melted in my mouth. However, the macedoine turned out to be a glorified potato salad with carrots, and the rouille was, I believe, an orange sauce that was dripped sparingly on my plate and offered little hint of spice with which to goad the mild-tasting tuna.
The documentary stock footage is deftly weaved into Overlord; indeed, the filmmaker reportedly worked around the archive footage that he found. It is jarring footage: London is burning amid the Blitz, then occupied Paris, with Hitler peering out of an airplane at the desolate landmarks. One of the most incredible scenes is when the Allies are testing a wheel that is launched into the water to clear land mines and create a fog. When the focus of the film moves back to Tom, I felt a tad impatient. Like most humans, I wanted to film to focus of the “grand scheme of things,” not the life and death of one man. And this is exactly the tragic aspect of war that the filmmaker emphasizes. Ulimately, one soldier’s death means nothing. We know, the military knows, and all the self-proclaimed “cannon fodder” sitting in their amphibuous vehicles on their way to the beaches of Normandy knows.
I struggled in my dessert choice, but Peach Tatin won out over the Chocolate Creme Caramel. It was a wise decision. To think how many men died on the beaches of Normandy so that peach tatin could endure. We are indebted to them.
