This film screened at my local Art House movie theater. The "Art Mission" has two screens and the chairs for the audience are somewhat askance to the movie screen. It's not too big of a deal. it's just that you have to turn a little in your chair to see the screen. I lead an Indie Movie Night at the theater, so I usually go there every Tuesday night. Last week's film was Land of Mine which is an extremely tense film set in Denmark immediately after WWII.
The premise is rather simple; the Nazis have laid thousands of land mines on the coast of Denmark and German POWs must remove them. By hand. With rudimentary tools. The POWs are the focus of the film. They are young boys ranging from teenager to young twenties. The Sargent in charge of the operation is the most compelling character in the film and one of the most compelling characters I have seen in film so far this year. He begins the film full of hate for the German POWs. Gradually he realizes what a bad lot they have drawn. They are not given any food. Only meager accomodations. And their chances for survival are next to none. By the end of the film only four of the boys are left alive. In film filled with redemption and forgiveness the Sargent tracks down the remaining boys and frees them to return to Germany.
Before that the tension is escalated to a breaking point. Each cut reveals the large coastline of Denmark. And each shot of the beach reminds the viewer of the horrible task the boys must accomplish. In one nerve splitting explosion after another, the POWs are killed off. In one final, unexpected explosion several of the POWs are killed.
Far from MASH or other similar programs that poke fun at war, Land of Mine is a serious film about the anguish the Danes felt towards Germans at the end of the war. I suppose the situation was similar to that of France. In France there have been several films and books about the Nazi occupation and the Vichy government. I don't know if there is any literature about the Nazi occupation of Denmark. I'm assuming that Nazis being Nazis the terms of occupation were similarly brutal. This film certainly alludes to the brutality of the Nazis.
This film is an incredible study of how to take an event and have it be expected, but unknown at the same time. There are many films that use timed devices to accelerate tension in the audience. Land of Mine does it exceedingly better than other films who do the same thing. In every scene that the POWs are removing mines from the beach, I was thinking about when one would go off. Who would be next? Would they survive at all? I was at a loss for predicting the outcome of the story. I thought that the Sargent would become sympathetic. But I didn't see the big explosion coming. And the continued hatred from the Sargent's superior reinforced the brutality of the Nazis and how the Danes wanted revenge.
The story made for an excellent film full of turns and emotion that made me feel sympathetic towards the young POWs. I really felt like the Sargent by the end of the film. I was asking myself, couldn't there be a better way of removing the mines? An excellent movie.
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