Gould, the Cleverly Unlikely Ingénue

Rating: 9/10 (23 September 2005)

Beginning with a brilliantly plausible depiction of the WWII tragedy known as the Malmedy Massacre during the Battle of the Bulge, Saints and Soldiers portrays the journey of a survivor of that "Massacre", Army Medic Stephen Gould (Aexander Niver, best know to me for his role more than a decade ago in Charles in Charge), and his internal struggle to come to terms with the causes of the onslaught, death, and mayhem, which surround him.
Evading death in the meadow at Five-Points Crossroads, Gould escapes captivity, and bands together with four unlikely, but dramatically aesthetic fellow surviving P.O.W. escapee G.I.s.
Gould's first acquaintance, an unnamed and unarmed fellow escapee is mercilessly gunned down by a German solder, whose next target would have been Gould himself, but for the timely courageous act of Corporal Nathan Greer, (Corbin Allred, from the Time Warrior series), who single-handedly saves Gould's life, but then inexplicably lets the German escape as well.
Gould and Greer then join up with Sergeant Gordon Gunderson (Peter Holden), who also owes his life to Corporal Greer, whom he respectfully refers to as "Deke" or "The Deacon".
While hiding out, armed with a single captured German rifle, these three are joined by the gung-ho, trigger-happy, Kraut-killing Private Shirl Kendrick, who has already made Gould's acquaintance.
This rag-tag band tries to hole up, to await rescue by the advancing Allied Forces, but when an Allied airplane gets shot down not far away, they and venture forth and rescue an airman, trapped in a tree by his own parachute, R.A.F. Flight Sergeant Oberon Winley (Kirby Heybourn, The R.M.), who possesses information crucial to the war which simply must get back to Headquarters.
Armed only with Winley's revolver and Deacon's captured Kraut rifle, these five make an heroic effort to save the battle, by making their way back across enemy lines.
Gould, the incurably bitter realist, secure in knowing that the war's atrocities of war are embodied by those in the other uniform, now behind enemy lines, begins to see the barbarism of warfare from a new perspective as he begins to see that his new comrades consist of: a women- and children-killer, an outwardly gung-ho closet coward, a subtle sadist, a naïve and overly-loyal optimist, and worst of all, a German sympathizer, each of whom is also contributing to the horrors of Gould's personal war, waging against Gould's outlook on life.
Gould makes a cleverly unlikely ingénue whose simplistic understanding of war takes several turns, as he seeks to make sense of new revelations of who are his enemies and who are his allies, who are the cowards and criminals of war, and what courage these cowards and criminals are capable of.
By movie's end, Gould is looking at war, and life, from a whole new perspective.
Something that each of us should do.
Brilliantly, however, the movie ends without Gould declaring any new beliefs of good or evil, it's just clear that everything that Gould started out believing so vehemently is no longer quite so crystal-clear, with a lot of compelling screenplay to justify Gould's conversion to a variety of possible ideals: is there an afterlife? is there redemption? is honor to be found among one's enemies? can cowards become courageous? can anything good come of so much death? is anything worth dying for? and a whole lot more.
Especially clever are the many unlikely but reportedly true war stories from other battles, which have been threaded into Gould's journey. Every "unbelievable" part of the movie has been reported by more than one eyewitness to similar real-life events.
Also cleverly incorporated into the story line is how this war story is relatively free of violence and "foul-language".
Most compelling of all, is how this movie, made in Utah, by predominantly (but not exclusively) Latter-day Saint artists, have incorporated the aspect of religion so subtly into the story, that although there are several inferences to Mormonism, those same inferences could easily also be drawn on any Christian religion, which, in the truest aspect of Islam, is a perfectly valid example of Islamically acceptable Christianity as well, which is an extremely important in light of today's religion-instigated wars in the Middle East.
Gould, a common Jewish surname, could easily be addressing in Greer: a returned Mormon missionary with a pocket-sized Book of Mormon, or a coffee intolerant traveling Baptist lay-minister with his New Testament and Psalms, or even a reasonably devout Islamic Suni with a pocket-sized portion of the Q'ran. This movie is not about any particular, but could easily be inferring the beliefs of any of a dozen of religions.
Again, Gould does not get to decide if Greer's religion is right, but we see Gould recognizing value in Greer's beliefs.
All in all, this is an extremely well-done movie.
The problem I find in this film is that Corbin Allred and not Alexander Niver, gets first billing. This is Gould's story, after all, not Deacon's. Deacon just gets under Gould's skin the most. But when you consider that the producers must have originally thought that the their audience would turn out to be predominantly Latter-day Saints in Utah, where the movie was made, it is somewhat understandable.
The entire cast was well played. Some of the pyrotechnics were pretty low budget, but, I go to the movies to see a story, not to see special effects.
All in all, this is an excellently made film, entirely deserving of its fourteen best-picture awards.