A thorn against France’s humiliating occupation by Nazi Germany in World War II, and the first recognized leader of the Resistance, Jean Moulin has endured in French history as an avatar of moral purity and goodness. Like any country which has withstood and overcome threats to its existence, France is devoted to its national figureheads and statesman.
With the splintering and fall of the Popular Front during the Spanish Civil War a horrible omen, Moulin’s unification in 1943 of the disparate forces working against the Vichy regime was the first step toward the liberation (or libération — say it in French!), laying the foundations of today’s liberal democratic France, however precarious it feels in 2026.
Having won attention examining perhaps the nadir of moral horror, with his Auschwitz death camp study “Son of Saul,” it’s natural that Hungarian director László Nemes would want to tackle something more empowering, while also offering a lesson in ethics as we fight today’s newly mutated fascism.
After “Sunset” and last year’s “Orphan” failed to break out in the way his Oscar-winning triumph did (which wasn’t without its own, quite convincing backlash), and his derogatory comments toward Jonathan Glazer’s 2024 Oscar acceptance speech sticking in many previously sympathetic viewers’ minds, he’s made a step into the more conventional, if high-end, French industry with “Moulin,” crafting a justified hagiography of the titular leader.
With a sole screenplay credit from Olivier Demangel (the co-writer of Mati Diop’s great “Atlantics,” alongside more commercial fare), a surprising collaboration given his typical pursuit of auteur control, Nemes offers a far more rigorous, austere variation on the historical biopic, but whose hermeticism in its narrow view of the Resistance proves punishing.
The film is simultaneously unadorned and deeply oppressive, staying close to the historical record (while fictionalizing the circumstances of Moulin’s eventual death, or martyrdom) in a fashion that offers little perspective, beyond a humanist call-to-arms and appeal toward remembrance. For one, in spite of his domestic importance, many relatively informed viewers will arrive to this film needing clarification on Moulin’s life and significance, which Nemes, Demangel, and Gilles Lellouche, the actor portraying him, do convey. But upon introducing his and the film’s primary antagonist, the SS Hauptsturmführer Klaus Barbie (Lars Eidinger), who’s attempting to neutralize the Resistance, the narrative becomes overtaken by the familiar psychological gamesmanship of Nazi interrogation, and hollow catharsis sought through beatings and torture.
In any successful career as a director, where original screenplays of your own denote integrity, one must take often a “gig” requiring less development time, leaving yourself open to material you couldn’t have devised (although Nemes certainly has the credentials and background, having lived partially in France). It’s also an opportunity to impose your point-of-view exclusively through stylistic means. The opening passage of “Moulin” gives illusory hope of another nervy filmmaking tour-de-force from Nemes, with a parachute dive from a military helicopter by Moulin and his comrades that’s awash in shivery atmospherics.
Flying in from their refuge in London, they dismount in a shallow marsh glimmering on the surface with moonlight, and patiently trudge through a yawningly empty stretch of farmland, which Nemes and his regular ace DoP Mátyás Erdély capture in unbroken camera movement. With this first cinematic flourish, critically achieved without dialogue, you feel the director pursuing his own slant on this well-trod cinematic territory, forgoing the pulpiness of Melville’s “Army of Shadows,” and the journalistic reportage of “The Sorrow and the Pity.”
After his first council meeting, where we scope the geography of resistance forces scattered across the country and their fragile communications network, we get an eloquent sketch of Moulin’s clandestine existence in Lyon, where he’s given the amusingly innocuous cover identity of “Jacques Martel,” an interior decorator. (Indeed, Moulin was an art buff, and drew acclaimed political cartoons during his interwar stint in French local government.)
More preposterously, although with a note of welcome playfulness, he rendezvous with a fictionalized love interest, the aristocratic and beautiful Comtesse de Forez (Louise Bourgoin), an alibi client meant to suggest “Martel’s” ruling class sympathies. But when an emergency meeting at a local doctor’s office is exposed, Barbie rounds up and incarcerates Moulin and comrades in the labyrinthine Montluc prison, whilst not being aware who the actual leader is, who they assume would give up key information under force.
Although there is nuance in Lellouche’s performance as he’s interrogated, providing noncommittal and ambiguous answers that give the vengeful Barbie every opportunity to doubt his loyalties, a Resistance member rats him out later, sending Moulin on his path toward martyrdom. There’s a forbidding evocation of a generalized “heart of darkness” here, but Nemes and Demangel ultimately miscalculate by assuming this key, if slender, fragment of history from the summer of 1943 can evoke all the complexities of occupation and collaboration, while its nods toward more philosophical concepts of crime and punishment feel cursory as well.
Moulin, in real life as in the film, is battered and defeated, yet his achievements in internal diplomacy will bring much future good. Nemes, however, again provides a lavishly mounted, yet claustrophobic view of history, with few provocative insights.
Grade: C+
“Moulin” premiered at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
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