Emmanuel Marre hasn’t made a movie in five years, but he hasn’t lost a step with his shrewd, bitter historical comedy A Man of His Time. Based on letters from his great-grandfather, the new movie, set between 1940 and 1944 in collaborationist France, follows a Vichy state official named Henri Marre (played pointedly by Swann Arlaud – the hot lawyer from Anatomy of a Fall whose fancams nearly surpassed the cultural importance of the film itself) on his complicated journey through the rise of Nazi power.

As the title implies, the movie opens with him quietly brushed off by those around him as “a man of his time,” despite his passion for major societal change. A genius, perhaps, he attends nightly soirées investigating the public pulse for his ideas. He believes in his declaration that efficiency above all will help France find its place soon after its German defeat in the early years of WWII. So much so that he constantly carries around his self-published manifesto, Notre Salut (Our Salvation), along with his unbridled ambition to leverage the fascist shift for personal triumph.

Quickly finding his place among the newly formed political ranks, his middle-management position at the Ministry of Labor becomes a fateful stepping stone on his path to getting more people on board with his directive. Here, the movie really takes off, circling something much more interesting than Henri himself. As most bureaucratic individuals do in a growing fascist state — which is where the movie extends far beyond its own presence into a modern-day climate of relevance — the faction’s ideals take over the person’s.


Henri is unable to send meaningful money back home to his estranged wife Paulette (Sandrine Blancke) due to his failure to sell his books, and he, knowingly or unknowingly, becomes an eerily apathetic cog in the machinery of Nazi persecution and forced labor. One of the film’s best features, though some may call it a bug, is keeping Paulette off screen for most of the film. Her character is spotlighted in voiceover through the letters she and Henri exchange over the years, letters that grow increasingly bitter and unsympathetic to Henri’s reality of a failed dream. 

Editor Nicolas Rumpl treats each communication with power, and they ultimately guide the movie down its most successful path of damnation by dereliction. I would go so far as to argue that the crumbling of Henri’s marriage is the most compelling aspect of the movie (it quite literally follows in the footsteps of Breaking Bad, in which we follow Henri from ages fifty to fifty-two), which indulges the film’s themes deliciously.

Internal struggles mount, Nazi power begins to flourish, and just like that, Henri succumbs to what everybody brushed him off as: “a man of his time.” Marre (the director) institutes a chilling mechanism to convey this doom, and it’s twofold. First, the film’s comedic interest feels akin to “The Office.” Quick snap zooms, reactive camera movements, and the observational nature of the revelations happening around Henri make his descent to complicity understandable, even justified. It’s an unexpected style for a topic like this, but it lets the film quickly switch between humor and seriousness. Second, cinematographer Olivier Boonjing utilizes harsh lighting in dark scenes, especially on Henri’s face, making it abundantly clear our main character is caught in the headlights of life. This may induce too much squirm-factor for some, feeling at odds with the movie’s other stylistic choices; I found it a fascinating retreat from everything else.

At two hours and thirty-five minutes, A Man of His Time tends to feel like a man of all time. It ultimately fails to justify its substantial historical-epic runtime, with a significant second-act drag and not enough big moments to fill the shoes of a “true” historical epic. It’s much more diluted by nature, finding its own personality and presence against similar musings such as The Brutalist (2024). The examination of not only political failure but personal failure is a sizable investigation, but one that could have fared better with a more potent duration.

The film conclusively examines a now commonplace inquiry into the psychology of carrying out evil. Are community leaders, especially political figureheads like Marre, complicit by simply “following orders?” Or is personal ideological motivation required? On a much deeper scale, is a simple man’s failure to pursue moral ambitions to blame for the world’s evils? Not every stone is overturned in search of answers to these questions, but enough are to make the film effective. 

A hidden-gem addition to the “failed Great Man” subgenre of films, A Man of His Time offers a unique insight into an invaluable period in history.

Review Courtesy of Ethan Simmie

Feature image credit to Michigan Films