Humanity, however, is reality

“it’s all vanity, it’s all illusion, everything except that infinite sky.” - the key line from Tolstoy’s War and Peace that kept playing over and over in my head while revisiting one of Jean Renoir’s masterpieces.

Throw out class, throw out race, throw out politics, just throw out every materialist concept out the window while you’re at it. Why? Because it’s all an illusion. An illusion that has seperated us since the dawn of time and will continue to seperate us to the burning of the sun.

Humanity, however, is reality.

In Grand Illusion, we get a chance to see these very concepts and ideas be thrown out the window by a group of french POW’s who come from different walks of life, all forced to not only confine with one another, but be subjected to the same tyranny. And what you get out of that is one of the strongest bonds of all - fraternity. Fraternity to achieve that one, striving, determined goal of a successful escape. If everyone in the world stood up right now, threw these binding concepts away, realizing that none of it matters, we’d all finally understand what we should have learnt from day one. That underneath everything we try to cover with vanity, we’re all the same.

One of the key works of french poetic realism, Grand Illusion still continues to pack a punch with it’s visceral painting of camaraderie, friendship and sacrifice. One of the all-time greats forever and ever.