Brits Do Their Best To Lose the War

Rating: Null/10 (11 October 2002)

Spoilers herein.
What a remarkable story. What a remarkable event that this was made by Brits. Self-examination? Exploration of the still arrogant class system that even then insisted they were a world power? Apology?
Quite apart from the historical significance of the event (and the significance of the film of the event), this is rather worth watching. It isn't because of the story, which is muddled and drifts off into ratholes like the operation. (Remember how clear everything was in `Seven Samurai')? It isn't because of the acting, which in general is British `tea-pot' acting. That is except for Anthony Hopkins. I've really pinged him for his later work, but here his readings are a true as wind.
It isn't for the score which must rank among the worst in film history (for a major film).
It isn't for the feel of tension, or the effects or anything like that. What makes this special is the camera. The shots of the airdrop from that first flash of beige planes until Sean Connery takes charge is brilliant filmmaking. The focus on tank treads, on glider towropes unfurling; the POV shots of dropping soldiers, the rise of the attacking tanks over the bridge. Although one loses the narrative thread of what's happening where spatially, the viewer certainly gets a feel for the machinery so it makes sense when Connery's group is stuck without it. The bridgemaking sequence flows like the water under it and seems to have the same inevitable inertia.
Now think about this: no helicopter shots. no slowmotion. no CGI, no compositing, no filters -- just the vision of one man and a simple camera in the moment of happening. (just like Connery's bunch with their shoes and rifles and little else while all the technology is set apart, waiting. Every framing trick Speilberg pulled in `Private Ryan,' you can see here except the underwater shots. And better, less cluttered with the need to thrill. Unsworth, the cinematographer, apparently learned from Kubrick because he was as transformed by `2001' as the characters of that play.
Some of this vision was appropriated by Malick in his epic war poem `Red Line.'
Ted's evaluation: 3 of 4 -- Worth watching.