Trench warfare during World War 1 was horrific. Not just because of the combat methods employed by the fighting forces, but the conditions under which soldiers lived made for high casualties from both sides. Trench warfare as a fighting method had to be resorted to for one major reason, to compensate for advances in weapon technology against the lack of development in mobility. Soldiers were under constant threat from being shot by snipers, blown apart by heavy artillery, and being shot by regular rifles if they were ever visible to the enemy. Most attacks were carried out on foot against occupied fighting lines meaning that usually the defending army had the advantage.The battle of Passchendaele occurred in 1917 in Belgium and is one of the famous battles of World War 1. I cannot say that I am any wiser about the real events of the battle having watched this movie, it affirms the horrors of the battle, but when the movies driving theme isn’t military related, it tends to be a bit sketchy on the real gruesome and more interesting details. Passchendaele is a Canadian movie set against the “distant” back drop of WW1 but the films events mostly take place in Canada.Michael Dunne (played by Paul Gross who also wrote and directed the movie) plays a Canadian infantryman who returns to his home land after being injured by shell fire. The movie’s opening sequence is used to remind us of the harshness of war by a good old fashioned fight with a German machine gun placement. We see him kill a young German soldier in cold blood, he stabs him in the forehead with his bayonet, the young German was unarmed and had surrendered. I didn’t really see what this act was supposed to mean from a morality point of view, Michael Dunne wasn’t really portrayed as a violent individual who would resort to such barbaric acts as a result of his continuous exposure to violence or anything like that. But straight after he does this, he wakes up back in Canada staring up at a nurse in a hospital.
For the next one hour and ten minutes, the film plays out as a period drama. It’s a love story between an injured soldier and a nurse who cares for him. After he recovers, Michael Dunne is reassigned to the army but is diagnosed with Shell Shock and given a post in the Calgary recruitment office. He becomes obsessed with the nurse so he begins to seek her affections which at first she resists, of course. The nurse has a younger brother, a very naive type kid who is just old enough to sign up to go to war, but the fact he has asthma prevents this happening. The kid is in love with the daughter of a doctor, and he tries to seek the fathers’ approval, but he fails and is deemed a coward, and a loser. Dunne actually denies the kids application to go to fight in the war himself at the recruiting office. Over time, Dunne wins the affections of the nurse, Sarah, and eventually learns that her father had been drafted into the army and was missing in action. It turns out that the battle her father fought in, Dunne was also involved in, which leads to the revelation that her father was German by nationality and returned to the father land to fight for his country, this brings about the lingering but unlikely possibility that Dunne had been the one to take his life, but they don’t really play on this too much. Once the towns’ people find out that the Nurse and her brother have German roots, they trash and vandalise the house, so Sarah the nurse moves in with Dunne.
Dunne is under command of a traditional hard-nosed army major in the recruitment office, he doesn’t like Dunne and believes he is a coward for not returning to fight in Europe. Back in ww1, shell shock was actually considered a psychological illness because the force of the blast from heavy shelling destroys nerves in the brain. Medically I’m not sure this is actually the case, but it sounds plausible. When Sarah the nurse’s brother is falsely given a clean bill of health by the aforementioned Dr. Father of his girlfriend, the major signs the kid up to fight. Sarah finds out about this and the kid, for some reason tells Sarah that it was Dunne who signed him up. Of course it wasn’t, but Sarah doesn’t yet know this and storms into a military meeting to confront Dunne. This is a completely far-fetched movie in terms of the plot points and how everything comes together, and at this stage a classic drama cliché that I really loathe is used to introduce the 3rd act. Dunne doesn’t say anything! She storms in and accuses him of something he has no idea about, and he sits there looking like a second rate actor in a cliff hanger ending of an Australian soap opera. If there was any inkling of “what the hell are you talking about, I didn’t do it” then there is no reason for anything that happens next to happen. So Dunne goes to the majors house, who really signed the kid up, with a piece of paper in his hand and demands he signs the paper to re-enlist him in the war using his mothers’ maiden name, which the major does with little to no resistance. So Dunne writes a letter to his (ex) girlfriend, and off he goes back into the war in Europe to watch over Sarah’s brother, who really is an idiot, I didn’t like the character much, I didn’t really admire his bravery, he signed up for the wrong reasons and didn’t really understand what he was getting himself into. I don’t think his reasons were just to impress his girlfriends father, later in the movie it is suggested that the kid actually signs up to find and kill his father.
Another classic drama cliché follows with the arrival of the brother’s girlfriend to Sarah’s house. Obviously we know the reason for this scene, and I think anybody that’s been watching this could easily predict the dialog exchange between the two. It is revealed that The kid (David his name is, but I’ll carry on referring to him as the kid, the naive kid, or the brother) was falsely given the medical clearance by the Dr father of his girlfriend, so he would go to war, die, and his daughter could then find a, what her father considers to be, a partner of higher calibre. The Dr father is meant to be a bad guy to do this, which of course he is, but, I don’t blame him, I would’ve done the same thing if I had a teenage daughter (which I don’t), if she bought this guy home I’d probably try and conceive some sort of plan to get him sent off to war to get shot. Sarah also learns that it wasn’t Dunne who signed up her brother.
So finally, and three quarters of the way through the movie, we get back to the war in Belgium, in fact, the battle of Passchendaele. Dunne is sure enough in the same regiment as the kid watching over him. I did cringe at one of the early scenes during this final act. The major from the recruiting office shows up in Belgium, and Dunne is summoned to one of the bunkers within his trench and questioned by senior officers about his somewhat illegal method he used to get back into the war. The major wants him court marshalled or whatever, but the senior officer promotes him and gives him his own company, asks him why he came back and Dunne says “For Love”, fair enough but, you know....... And then for the next gem of a new completely inconceivable story angle, Sarah has re-enlisted as a nurse, and is of course at the same location as Dunne and her brother. She does mention that it took a while for her to find him/them, but I still don’t buy it.
The scenes of battle that follow are very well shot. The cinematography is top notch, the tone is harrowing. The dank and dark trenches, a place of death, suffering and disease, the depiction is good and I really became hooked into seeing how this battle was going to play out. It is very much over dramatic in its events, but the special effects were fantastic and the fighting was brutal. Once the offensive begins and the enemy soldiers go “over the top” into no man’s land, the Canadians defend their trench with gun fire. When the Germans eventually reach the allied frontline (which was only about 30/40 yards away), the fighting goes hand to hand. This scene is really cool and we get treated to some awesome action. Heads are caved in with hatchets & axes, soldiers violently stabbed with bayonets, gun fire tearing through bodies, Artillery shells blowing up sending soldiers catapulting through the air. The scene is brief but pretty hardcore, both the imagery and the action are well shot, nicely cut with a touch of cinematic finesse. There is a really cool aerial shot which pulls back from close up to a birds-eye view of the battlefield. I think it is definitely a CG shot as it was too smooth to be a helicopter, but none the less, the film makers’ vision of a World War 1 battlefield is nicely captured.
I generally enjoy drama where romance is involved if told well. But I really think this movie misses the mark in terms of the demographic it is aimed at. It doesn’t by any means mix good drama with good action, the experience as an overall piece was far too disjointed. The first 2 acts actually got quite dull, and by the time they got back to the war, I was in need of something stimulating. I think if you have a wife or girlfriend that doesn’t really enjoy war films, but enjoys costume dramas or romances; you could both get something out of this movie, but for completely the wrong reasons.
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Whilst looking for some artwork to include with this review, I did a google search and I noticed that the two posters, also DVD covers for this flick, are all too similar. One includes the kissing couple above the soldiers silhouette image, and the other one is pretty much exactly the same poster but with the kissing couple missing, and the bottom image shifted upwards to fill in the blank space.
This completely exemplifies the major problem this movie suffers from that I have tried to highlight.......I don't know, but my guess is that this was a marketing decision to remove the 'romance' from the cover as the 'war' theme is the more powerful marketing pull for the male audience. The DVD covers I saw of this in stores all had the kissing couple missing.
