Arab fighters gain 'Glory'

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It might be hard to believe now, but Muslims and Christians once fought side by side to defeat what both saw as a common enemy.

You'd be forgiven for not knowing this. While there have been many, many films about World War II, the story of the North Africans who fought for France has been little told.

"Days of Glory" ("Indigenes") rights this wrong -- and another. French President Jacques Chirac recently announced that the pensions of foreign soldiers who served in the French army will finally be made equal to those of French soldiers. The reported reason for this change of heart is that he was moved by a private screening of this film.

It's easy to see why he found "Days of Glory" so affecting. Any didacticism in the film -- and there is some -- is forgotten as soon as one gets lost in the storytelling.

"Days of Glory," an international co-production in Arabic and French, is up for a best foreign film Oscar (officially as an Algerian entry) this Sunday. The film follows a group of Algerian, Moroccan and Tunisian men, a small part of the 130,000 Africans and North Africans who helped liberate France from the Germans.

Perhaps the weakest part of the film is motivation -- it's never really clear why the five central volunteers enlisted. Not one of them had even set foot in France.

Moroccan brothers Yassir (Samy Naceri) and Larbi (Assaad Bouab) say it's the money. There's a hint it's also why young Algerian Said (Jamel Debbouze) joined. His family lives in abject poverty, but he tells his mother, "I want to help France," after he hears a man marching through the town in 1943 declaring, "We must wash the French flag with our blood!"

Less apparent is why Algerians Messaoud (Roschdy Zem) and Abdelkader (Sami Bouajila) joined. Messaoud comes to value the new world to which he gets exposed -- but he couldn't know he would fall in love with a Frenchwoman. ("Ever slept in sheets before?" he responds when another soldier asks him why he plans to settle in France after the war.)

Abdelkader is the most educated -- and ambitious -- of the bunch. The corporal can read and write, unlike most of the North Africans. He hopes to make colonel one day, but it soon becomes apparent that Frenchmen are always promoted above foreigners.

That's the least of the indignities. Fresh tomatoes, for example, are only for Frenchmen. So is the opportunity to take leave to visit loved ones. Abdelkader tells the uneducated, poor Said that the army means equality -- in his uniform, he's the equal of the others. The rest of the film shows up his naivete.