Insincere

Rating: 4/10 (17 January 2020)

This film proffers a realistic presentation of a WW1 battlefield and of the threats, the physical terrors, of such a place, but it is actually like a hybrid mediated version of that reality. The result is something like following an avatar in immersive game. This impression is confirmed at the film's end.
When it starts the camera has the viewer in the middle of the action and immediately the cleanliness of the soldiers, their spotless uniforms, their fresh faces seem at odds with the mud and shell fire. Then their dialogue is phrased and framed around a type of theatrical form. It needn't be crude or ignorant but it conveys a polished and mannered styling of men talking.
Into the action of the film, the two leads take us through the hell of Flanders with mud, rats and corpses, and as these sequences proceed it seems as if the grammar, the structure of the drama is like a multi-level game where the avatars start on one level and then move onto another encountering new places and dangers along the way. As the film progresses it becomes increasingly clear that this is the logic to the film's pacing and drama.
The impression is sealed in the second half when our hero is lost in a shattered village and meets a woman - nice quiet moment in the game here - and escaping the ruins falls over a steep waterfall and lands in lush country. Where such a high waterfall is in that part of Belgium is a mystery, and then to enter a sylvan land is even more mysterious. It as if he went up to level 8 in the game.
Then there is a battle scene with troops going 'over the top' while enemy shells rain down; meanwhile our hero is running as these shell bursts but do not disturb his relentless legs, nor shake the earth, never mind that the shock waves would upend a normal man.
It's not Passchendaele, nor any battle front as documented, but it is like a game where you are a courier sent on a deadly mission to deliver a message before the lives of 1600 men are potentially squandered.
It's not as if the film industry hasn't perpetrated a fraud with history, this one just seems more insincere than most.