This Danish film, detailing a little-known story about the
treatment of some captured German soldiers in the immediate aftermath of World
War II, was a finalist in the Best Foreign Language Film category at the 2017
Academy Awards, losing to The Salesman from Iran.
It is May 1945 in Denmark. Hitler is dead and Germany has
just been defeated. As opening credits run, the movie begins with the sound of
heavy breathing. Then we see a Danish soldier sitting alone in his Jeep – the
source of this evocative breathing. It is Sgt. Rasmussen, a ruggedly handsome military
man, seething as he sits there watching a long line of military trucks, gear,
troops, and what-all slowly making its way down the road in the opposite
direction. Also in this caravan are hundreds of German prisoners of war being
shepherded down the road – presumably for eventual repatriation.
German troops, of course, had overrun Denmark early in WWII
and had brutally occupied the country for over five years prior to their
defeat. We do not know what Rasmussen has been through, how many of his
colleagues may have been killed in the war, how he or his family has suffered
over the last several years or even if he has a family. (In fact, we never
learn about his personal history.) But we know, in this moment, he is angry. He
gets out of the Jeep and picks a fight with a helpless POW, then beats the crap
out of him, until eventually restrained by other Danes. He yells at the prisoners,
"Get out of my country … We hate you!"
Sgt. Rasmussen is not just pissed off at the enemy soldiers
but at his new unenviable assignment: he’s to take charge of a dozen or so of
these guys and use them to clear a section of Danish beach of landmines. During
their years of occupation, the German Wehrmacht, fearing an Allied invasion
along this coast, laid hundreds of thousands of landmines here. The British
proposed and perhaps even pressured Denmark to use German POWs for de-mining these
beaches. Rasmussen’s squad of prisoners are already in bad shape: tired, dirty,
hungry, scared, defeated and very, very young – boys really, perhaps 16 years
old, give or take. He despises them and his task.
Still, duty is duty, so he sets about training these boys, whipping
them into shape for their dangerous, terrifying task.
We learn all this within the first 10 minutes. The remaining
hour and a half of the movie follows a (mostly) predictable course as we get to
know some of these German boys a little, and Rasmussen's initial tough, even
brutal attitude gradually softens as he gets to know them too. Along the way
there are many, many evocatively nervous moments watching these involuntary
recruits perform their high risk work. Seeing these kids poking the sand
looking for mines and then carefully defusing them fosters our empathy, as we quickly
understand that someone may well die along the way. This anticipation and the
unpredictability, the randomness of the inevitable explosions and casualties
creates a terrible, exquisite anxiety that pervades much of the last portion of
this picture.
The performances in Land of Mine are uniformly good
especially that of Roland Møller as Sgt. Rasmussen. The photography
is also excellent. And, the film did hold my interest throughout, grippingly at
times. If you enjoy this sort of thriller – reminiscent of moments in The
Hurt Locker (2008) – Land of Mine may be for you.
There are some weaknesses, however. One is the overall foreseeability of the
story's arc. Another is that the characters lack much definition. We learn
something about the backgrounds and aspirations of a few POWs, but not a whole
lot; and we know almost nothing about Sgt. Rasmussen except that underneath his
cold military exterior lies some humanity. To the extent we empathize with the prisoners,
it is not because we know them very well, but because they are innocents. To Rasmussen,
initially, these Germans represent the horrors and atrocities of the occupation,
yet it seems highly unlikely that these particular boy-soldiers can or should
be held responsible.
We don't need to be told that war is hell. This film reminds
us that the aftermath of war can be just as hellish, if not more so. The fact
that thousands of Germans were forced into this work of clearing mines raises
legal and moral questions that, for the most part, have long been ignored in
the history books – particularly in Denmark. It is estimated that around half the
POWs used in this operation were killed or injured. Pursuant to the Geneva
Convention, forcing POWs to carry out hard or dangerous labor is forbidden. The
British and Danish military commands denominated the captured German soldiers
as "voluntarily surrendered enemy personnel" and claimed they were
exempt from the Geneva proscription. Of course, the post--WWII war crimes
trials did not address any of this. The victors were not in the dock.
Nevertheless, it is clear that this was, in fact, an officially sanctioned war
crime.
I understand why Land of Mines turned out to be a big
deal in Denmark, addressing a largely ignored and shameful aspect of that
country's history; and the press materials spend a fair amount of ink on that
history. It is a little less clear why the rest of us should care very much. The
producers point to the ongoing very real problem of unrecovered landmines in
the world today. Nice try, but this film does not really touch on that concern
(which is about the death and maiming of civilians from forgotten landmines
long after a war or conflict has ended).
Still, as I said, it is
dramatic and holds our interest.
101 minutes.
Subtitled
Grade: B+
In limited release at
select theaters nationwide
No comments:
Post a Comment