(Spoiler at the end)
It's difficult to sum up the experience of watching this film. It weaves suspense, devastation, love, hope, and the horrors of war together into a picture that will stay with me for a long time to come.
I was fortunate to watch this film at a showing with the director and some of the cast and crew. As the director remarked, while it is a war movie, the antagonist is not Germany or any other villain with a distinct face--the antagonist is war itself. This comes through in very powerful ways, enabling the film to capture the visceral *feeling* of war-not something dramatized or twisted into heroic narratives set to rousing music, but stripped back into raw slices of life stitched into a patchwork that carries you into the war, through it, and beyond it. It doesn't need fanfare to guide it because the moments truly speak for themselves, leaping through the screen to grab you and bring you along in the experience. I think if you enjoyed the movie Dunkirk and its style of storytelling, you'll like this.
After the showing, the director said something that really stuck with me and sums up the heartbreaking but deeply stirring core of this film: this is a story about what people do with what is left after their worlds are blown apart. How they make do with the broken pieces, how they build and rebuild in the remains--but are also haunted by what might have been.
I definitely recommend this film. However, please be aware that there are a few graphic moments depicting injuries and deaths that are not gratuitous at all (I think they were very appropriately done), but may nevertheless be disturbing to some viewers (they don't last long though).
Spoiler: The way you could feel the entire weight of the story in that last look between the two men, and then in the empty glasses on the table... like all of the journey was summed up in that moment. Everything there could never be enough words to say. Everything that words would always fail to tell, so they showed us instead. Utterly phenomenal.
It's difficult to sum up the experience of watching this film. It weaves suspense, devastation, love, hope, and the horrors of war together into a picture that will stay with me for a long time to come.
I was fortunate to watch this film at a showing with the director and some of the cast and crew. As the director remarked, while it is a war movie, the antagonist is not Germany or any other villain with a distinct face--the antagonist is war itself. This comes through in very powerful ways, enabling the film to capture the visceral *feeling* of war-not something dramatized or twisted into heroic narratives set to rousing music, but stripped back into raw slices of life stitched into a patchwork that carries you into the war, through it, and beyond it. It doesn't need fanfare to guide it because the moments truly speak for themselves, leaping through the screen to grab you and bring you along in the experience. I think if you enjoyed the movie Dunkirk and its style of storytelling, you'll like this.
After the showing, the director said something that really stuck with me and sums up the heartbreaking but deeply stirring core of this film: this is a story about what people do with what is left after their worlds are blown apart. How they make do with the broken pieces, how they build and rebuild in the remains--but are also haunted by what might have been.
I definitely recommend this film. However, please be aware that there are a few graphic moments depicting injuries and deaths that are not gratuitous at all (I think they were very appropriately done), but may nevertheless be disturbing to some viewers (they don't last long though).
Spoiler: The way you could feel the entire weight of the story in that last look between the two men, and then in the empty glasses on the table... like all of the journey was summed up in that moment. Everything there could never be enough words to say. Everything that words would always fail to tell, so they showed us instead. Utterly phenomenal.