Welcome back to another week at BCB After Dark: the hippest hot spot for night owls, early risers, new parents and Cubs fans abroad. Come on in and sit wit us. No matter if the weather is hot or cold out there, the vibe in here is cool. There’s no cover charge. We still have a few tables available. The hostess will seat you now. Bring your own beverage.
BCB After Dark is the place for you to talk baseball, music, movies, or anything else you need to get off your chest, as long as it is within the rules
of the site. The late-nighters are encouraged to get the party started, but everyone else is invited to join in as you wake up the next morning and into the afternoon.
Last week I asked you what was Team USA manager Mark DeRosa’s biggest mistake in the loss to Italy in the World Baseball Classic. Forty-four percent of you said that DeRosa never should have started rookie Nolan McLean. Another 25 percent thought that starting Paul Goldschmidt over Bryce Harper was his biggest boner.
Here’s the part where we listen to music and talk movies. You can skip that if you want. You won’t hurt my feelings.
Tonight we’re featuring a classic performance from Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers from 1958. Lee Morgan is on trumpet, Benny Golson on saxophone, Jymie Merritt on bass and Bobby Timmons on pianto.
This is “Whisper Not.”
So the Academy Awards were last night and One Battle After Another won Best Picture. Unless you worked on the film. I’m telling you that you should not care. I’ve seen way too many arguments about it online today.
Tonight I’m continuing my series of offering my thoughts of the top ten films in the 2022 BFI Sight & Sound critics poll of the greatest film of all time. Of all such polls, this is the one that is considered the most “canonical.” Although none of them won an Oscar for Best Picture or Best Foreign Film, which ties into my previous paragraph. But even with the the BFI list, I don’t agree with all of the top ten picks in the poll and I imagine that literally no one does. We all have our own opinions and that’s fine. Like the Oscars, have fun with this but don’t take it too seriously.
My plan was to do two short pieces on each film at a time, but once again I got too involved in writing up Beau Travail that I’m going to put off Mulholland Drive until next time. In any case, it would have been a major feat for me to not go on and on about Mulholland Drive, so me writing a little too much on Beau Travail tonight is probably a good thing.
7. Beau Travail (1999). Directed by Claire Denis. Starring Denis Lavant, Michel Subor and Grégoire Colin.
Beau Travail (“Nice Work”) is director Claire Denis’ re-imagining of the Herman Melville novella Billy Budd. The setting of this psychological drama is changed from a Royal Navy ship during the French Revolutionary Wars to the modern-day French Foreign Legion in Djibouti. The entire story is told in flashback by a former Legionnaire with very little dialogue. The film is quiet, deliberate and poetic. Denis grew up in French Colonial Africa and she definitely has an eye for the continent’s beauty.
I’ve never read Billy Budd, but I have seen the 1962 Peter Ustinov-directed film version that starred Terence Stamp, Robert Ryan and Ustinov, so I’m somewhat dangerously basing some of my thoughts on that. Denis makes some clever adjustments to the Melville story. For one, rather than focusing on the characters played by Stamp (Budd) and Ustinov (Captain Vere), Lavant plays Galoup, which is the equivalent of the Ryan role, who is the villain of the Ustinov film. So the villain of Billy Budd becomes the protagonist, although definitely not the hero, of Beau Travail. It’s an interesting switch. Certainly in the Ustinov film, we’re supposed to identify with the unfair abuse that Billy is subjected to. That’s just not that interesting to Denis. What’s more interesting are the rather inscrutable motivations of the abuser.
Also, by setting Beau Travail in the modern day also takes the death penalty off the table, so Denis had to come up with a creative way to work that in anyways.
Galoup is our narrator, who tells us of his time in the French Foreign Legion in Djibouti. He has a local girlfriend, whom he goes dancing with at the clubs. He loves his service in the Legion and admires his commanding officer Forestier (Subor). His entire concept of his own self is tied up in his image of himself as a Legionnaire. He loves the self-discipline and order that comes with being in the Legion.
Galoup’s world is shook when a new recruit, Gilles Sentain (Colin), joins the unit. Galoup instantly takes a strong dislike to Sentain. Galoup believes that Sentain is a malignant force in the unit and in particular, he dislikes the interest that Forestier is taking in him. To be clear, Sentain has given Galoup no particular reason to hate him. He’s been nothing but a quiet soldier who does his job. This is something carried over from Billy Budd, or at least the Ustinov film version. (Reading a summary of the novella, Melville posits that Claggart envies Billy’s good looks.) Galoup warns Forestier of the malign force that he believes Sentain represents, but his warnings are ignored by Forestier because there is nothing behind them. Eventually, there’s a confrontation between the two men which changes the lives of both of them.
There isn’t much dialogue in Beau Travail and the story is pushed along by Galoup talking about his memories after he returned to France. Denis luxuriates in the beauty of the East African desert and honestly, the men. If you’re the type who enjoys a film featuring lots of buff, shirtless men sweating while working and exercising in the hot African sun, this is the movie for you. There’s a definite homosexual subtext to the entire film, but it never bubbles to the surface. Maybe sexual attraction is the reason that Galoup hates Sentain so much, but we’re given no reason to think either one is gay and Galoup did have a native girlfriend whom he clearly misses after he returned to France.
In fact, much of what makes Beau Travail a good film is how much is left unsaid. Denis lets the images of the men, the desert and the battle between the two do most of the talking. It’s a beautiful and wistful series of images that tell a compelling tale.
Would I put it in my top ten? Here’s where the film loses me. Were I Siskel or Ebert back in the nineties and asked my opinion of Beau Travail, I’d give it an enthusiastic thumbs up. But as one of the ten greatest films of all time? No way. Denis was the assistant director on director Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire (she was the one to brilliantly suggest Peter Falk for the film) and I think Wings of Desire is the clearly better film. That film is a candidate for my list of the greatest ten films of all time. I could probably name close to a hundred films that I would vote for before I’d consider Beau Travail. So while I agree that the film should be acclaimed and that it should be somewhere in the BFI Sight & Sound Top 250, I think number seven is way too high. But you shouldn’t take that as criticism. You should still watch it.
Here’s a trailer from the 4K restoration of Beau Travail.
Welcome back to everyone who skips the music and movies.
Ben Brown has a new sinker. (Baseball Prospectus sub. req. although if you subscribe to Apple News, it’s also here.) Ben Brown is looking very impressive in Spring Training with is new sinker.
We’ve heard this story before. Brown was a very promising pitching prospect that the Cubs got from the Phillies in 2022 for David Robertson. He made his major league debut in 2024 and between that year and last year, he’s been bouncing between the starting rotation and the bullpen. He’s been quite poor (5.26 ERA) over the course of his career as a starter. He’s been just “below average” as a reliever in his career with a 4.79 ERA.
Brown has struggled in his career despite some nasty stuff, an excellent strikeout rate and solid control. In that Baseball Prospectus article, Maddie Landis argues that Brown’s problem is that he’s been a two-pitch pitcher. Despite his fastball being around 96 miles per hour, it’s very hittable because, among other reasons, he catches too much of the plate with it too often. His knuckle-curve should be elite, but she argues that with only two real pitches, it’s too predictable. When major league hitters can guess what you’re throwing, even elite stuff is hittable.
Should this sinker turn out to be a real weapon for Brown, Landis argues that Brown has number-two starter upside. With a good third pitch, hitters will no longer be able to guess on the other two pitches and be right at least half the time. (Brown also has a changeup, but he rarely throws it because it’s not very good.)
The problem with Brown starting this year is that the Cubs already have a full starting rotation. Matthew Boyd, Cade Horton, Edward Cabrera, Shōta Imanaga and Jameson Taillon are already written down as the rotation to start the season. Justin Steele looks to be ready to go by Memorial Day.
So Brown will almost certainly start the season in the bullpen. But will he stay there? Pitchers get hurt. Also, Jameson Taillon hasn’t looked great in Spring Training. Nor was he great in the World Baseball Classic for Canada. We’ve talked about Imanaga’s struggles at the end of last season. If either one of them continue to struggle and Brown is pitching well out of the bullpen, then the Cubs will have to consider making a move to put Brown in the rotation.
Of course, this all assumes that Brown’s is as successful against regular season hitters as it is against the ones in Spring Training. It also assumes that Brown can go deep into games and throw 90 to 100 pitches every fifth day instead of 15-20 two or three times a week.
So do you think Brown will be more of a reliever or a starter in 2026? I asked in what role will he throw the most innings, because it’s hard to compare appearances as a reliever to appearances as a starter.
Thanks so very much for stopping by. We hope you’ve enjoyed yourself. Please get home safely. We want you to stop by again. Recycle any cans and bottles. Tip your waitstaff. And join us again tomorrow for more BCB After Dark.
