Jean goes by many names. He calls himself Jacques and Max and Martel, and might even answer to Melville, such is the unmistakable imprint of “Le Samouraï” and “Army of Shadows” on “Moulin.” But the lineage runs deeper. Director Jean-Pierre Melville — himself a former Resistance fighter who kept his nom de guerre for filmmaking — drew his cinematic myths in part from the real Jean Moulin, building from the fedora-clad image of the clandestine hero who had already become a secular icon of France’s Fifth Republic by the 1960s.
All of which is to say that Hungarian auteur László Nemes draws on a deep and intricate tradition in his French-language debut, returning to Cannes competition with a project both distinct from and in dialogue with his 2015 Grand Prix winner “Son of Saul.” That earlier film forged a new visual grammar for depicting the unspeakable by never moving its focus from a tight shot on its protagonist’s head. This new work follows a tight-lipped operative who spends long stretches alone on screen. Both unfold as immersive, claustrophobic prison sagas lit by the spark of resistance.
After the title card, we do not hear the name Moulin again until past the two-hour mark. Returning from a visit with De Gaulle in London, our hero (played by Gilles Lellouche) parachutes into the film as Max, a key operative tasked with uniting a number of competing and unruly factions. The year is 1943, the country is under Nazi occupation and the trickle of information is as limited as it is dangerous. At a Paris rendezvous, Max becomes Martel — and with that, acquires the papers, accessories and backstory that will allow him to travel to Lyon and share fragments of intelligence with fellow operatives in person.
The film moves methodically as it tracks the painstaking and time-consuming nature of communication work, at a pace that will certainly leave the “this could have been an email” crowd in pieces. Nemes’ camerawork matches the mood, offering a succession of still frames, classically composed and filled with fedoras, cigarette smoke, and strong-jawed profiles lit in chiaroscuro. These operatives must hide in plain sight, even as the film’s 35mm cinematography and period design make it increasingly difficult not to gawk.
Only someone has tipped off the Gestapo, though we never know who (and, in fact, still do not know as a matter of historical certainty). A mass arrest ensues, because the Nazis know that the so-called Max will be among those meeting at a doctor’s office on the outskirts of Lyon, but not how to identify him. The film then narrows its spatial scope while sharpening the tension of hiding in plain sight, as, from prison, Martel must conceal that he is Max — whose real name, Moulin, would further endanger the cause.
Lellouche has a sturdy screen presence, with an almost comically square set of features — a face full of right angles recently put to comic use in this year’s Cannes opener, “The Electric Kiss.” But Moulin needs to remain sturdy, especially once the Gestapo, led by none other than Klaus Barbie (Lars Eidinger), tries to break him. The film thus morphs into a sustained battle of wills: For the good of a free France, Lellouche must make Moulin the model of stoicism, while the ever-wily Eidinger takes evident relish in hamming it up as a figure history would dub “the Butcher of Lyon.”
As that battle settles into stalemate, “Moulin” maintains a somber keel, never curdling into bleakness or hagiography. With escape and release dim prospects, the film plays as a controlled study in self-control — unpacking a form of resistance divorced from action and a kind of fatalism born of genuine hope. A scene in which the imprisoned men sing “La Marseillaise” before the assembled Gestapo calls to mind a similar sequence from “Casablanca,” only here with a nightclub’s champagne fizz replaced by prison grays, and a denouement that skews rather more gruesome. The rallying cry is all the stronger for it.
Given the film’s quiet and classical compositional style, it invites comparisons to earlier works. And given the figure’s veneration as a secular saint of the French Republic — with his name on high schools and street signs across the Hexagon — the project might just as easily be called “The Passion of Jean Moulin.” That would perhaps narrow the film’s reach, even as it expands Nemes’ canvas.
Following last year’s “Orphan,” he continues to test out new styles and voices. A decade after the onetime Béla Tarr protégé emerged seemingly fully formed, arriving from nowhere and almost immediately saddled — not always comfortably — with the mantle of European cinema’s youngest Old World master, Nemes continues to surprise. Before his next project takes him stateside for a Cormac McCarthy adaptation, this still film shows him very much in motion.
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