It’s funny how most any “foreign” film seems to acquire a vague air of quality, how there’s almost an assumption that outside Hollywood, all movies are inherently better, born a step up the ladder. A “foreign” film comes with expectations – even when you’re a native of the same country that produced it.
At least, that’s the only explanation I can come up with for my surprise and disappointment, when I walked in to a theatre and found that Passchendaele, the most expensive Canadian movie ever made, was really nothing more than a fairly conventional war drama. Written and directed by, and starring, Canadian golden boy Paul Gross, it’s been hyped for months: its release, timed to match the 90th anniversary of the end of the First World War, added an air of solemn authenticity to the build-up.
The story follows a veteran soldier as he sees the horrors of war, gets wounded, falls in love with a nurse, and promptly heads back to the front to rescue said nurse’s headstrong younger brother. It’s caught somewhere between “war drama with a romantic subplot” and “romance with a war-torn backdrop” – and the tension between the two genres can be awkward. The dialogue, littered with modern-day colloquialisms, can be jarring.
But for all that, it’s beautifully filmed (partly in Alberta’s Rocky Mountains, and partly in a perfectly re-created wasteland of muddy trenches) and the battle scenes are as powerful as any I’ve ever seen. Seeing it on the big screen, within days of November 11, was a vivid reminder of all those ugly things we’re never supposed to forget.
by Eva Holland | Source: 35mm Print
01 Dec 2008 10:51 PM | Submit Comment
