Army of Shadows

I really want to like Jean-Pierre Melville, and I admire his movies, but of the three I've seen- Le Samourai, Le Cercle Rouge, and Army of Shadows, I can't really say I enjoyed them.

It's a complicated issue, 'admire' vs. 'enjoy'; the latter implies that a movie has to be fun, or exciting, or populist, which I hope isn't really right. I enjoyed, for instance, Solaris (the original) which is slow and methodical, but which hits certain notes that really moved me. In Army of Shadows, I can see the notes being hit- the moral dilemmas posed are ones absolutely worth posing, and of literary weight- but somehow they don't strike me. It may be Melville's subdued palette, which is somehow greyer than noir ever managed to be, or it maybe his characters' minimalist acting, which reminds me a lot of Bresson, another French director whose movies I am always glad to have seen but rarely excited to be watching. It's maddening, though, to try to push yourself to like something and fail, like your mind will not listen to itself.

It's worth noting that Army of Shadows is one of those movies that very clearly got mixed into the blend for some of the strongest parts of Inglourious Basterds, and I think that's something that happens a lot with movies like these- bits of Bresson movies get turned into Schrader scripts, Kurosawa gets turned into Leone, etc. etc. This feels like it should resolve the issue, but it just makes it worse- if people I enjoy can enjoy this, why can't I?