Passchendaele

Plot synopsis:
The main character is Sergeant Michael Dunne (later reverting to his mother's maiden name McCrae for re-enlistment), introduced in the spring of 1917 after Vimy Ridge, a decorated veteran of the 10th Battalion, CEF.
During heavy combat in a ruined town, Dunne is wounded and sent home from Europe as a neurasthenia patient. While recovering from his injuries, he meets nurse Sarah Mann (Caroline Dhavernas) in Calgary, Alberta, where he had originally enlisted.
Sarah Mann is drummed out of the local nursing service, and ostracised in town, because her father was of German descent and had left Canada to rejoin the Imperial German Army in 1915. He was killed at Vimy Ridge on the opposing side to Sergeant Dunne. She has become addicted to morphine as a means of dealing with the recurring loss in her life.
David Mann (Joe Dinicol) is Sarah's younger brother. Despite being ineligible for military service due to asthma, he is desperate to win the respect of his girlfriend's father at a time when military service is demanded of all young men. He is vehemently anti-German and tries to expunge the fact that his father was German, and had died fighting for Germany, from the family history. His girlfriend's father pulls strings to get him enlisted, arguably in the hope that he will not return and marry his daughter. Sarah originally thinks Michael has enlisted David, in his role as local recruitment officer, but later finds this is untrue. The enlistment is further facilitated by a British recruiting officer whose malice and goading of David Mann and Michael Dunne makes him the film's principal antagonist. Michael however feels a responsibility and re-enlists as Private McCrae in order to protect David at the front.
As a result, both David and Michael end up in the battlefields of Belgium. Sarah also enlists and follows the 10th ending up as a nurse in triage at an Advanced Dressing Station near the front. The three arrive in Flanders in time for the Battle of Passchendaele. Dunne and Sarah soon meet up again when Dunne brings a wounded man to the aid station. Although Dunne's cover as McCrae is soon blown, he manages to escape punishment and is promoted to platoon leader by Lieutenant Colonel Ormond, who knew him from earlier fighting, when his past actions "should have got a V.C." and because of the need for experienced soldiers as high casualties were expected.
When the Canadians launch their attack, the 8th Battalion (Winnipeg Rifles), known as the Little Black Devils, faces a German counterattack and become pinned down. Dunne's company is sent to support them. After the support company arrives, the 8th Battalion retreats from the battlefield, wrongly believing that they are finally relieved, leaving the job of holding the ground to Dunne's small force. As the reality of the war begins to set in, David Mann begins to realize the war was not what he believed it would be. Dunne's forces spend the night in their trenches, and as a result of the shelling, David begins to have an asthmatic/panic attack and Dunne calms him down, relieving the problem.
The next morning the Germans counter-attack, and make it as far as the line, and both forces attack each other in close quarters combat. As the Germans retreat, David breaks down and chases them back to surrender. He jumps into their trenches and is met by a gun to the face where he begs in German. He is about to be shot when an artillery shell lands and the explosion throws him onto what is effectively a cross, created by walkway timbers from the trench. He is visually crucified by the explosion. This relates to Dunne's earlier story of the legendary report of the crucified soldier. When Dunne sees this he takes his helmet off, throws his gun down and runs to David, in a reckless attempt to keep his promise to keep him alive, getting shot in the process. He crawls to the cross on his knees, looking up at it. The Germans stop firing and allow him to retrieve David, whom he carries back to his own lines. The fighting swiftly resumes with a shell landing. David lives, but Dunne is carried to the hospital where he dies after his last words with Sarah. This happens just as the news comes in that the Canadians have captured Passchendaele Ridge.
The ending scene shows the wheelchair-bound David Mann (now only with one leg); Sarah Mann; David's girlfriend Cassie; and Dunne's best friend Royster (Gil Bellows) paying tribute at Dunne's grave on his home farm. The marker has been altered to remove the "5" of 1915 and changed to 1917. The camera then pans out and the background alters to a field of hundreds of Canadian war graves with a riderless horse on the horizon.

Tags: tragedy, violence, flashback

Review:
Paul Gross' Passchendaele provides a unique perspective of the Canadian effort during the First World War. Those who are expecting just battle scenes will likely be disappointed.For those looking for character development, some romance, an interesting perspective on recruitment pressure, and yes -- AMAZING battle scenes -- then yes, this movie is for you.As a Military History student, I had no issues with the historical accuracy of the movie.
While the battle scenes are quite brutal, they are not sensational or exploitive, since to have made them sensational or exploitive would defeat the great effort this movie takes in showing how men had to cope with life after the war and the memories of what they lived through.Undoubtedly there will be cynics who will decry some moments as contrived or melodramatic, but these are the small-minded who have missed the real emotion of this film.
Wow. Great flick!Besides being an admitted movie addict, I'm also a retired professional soldier and a combat veteran who's served in multiple theaters of conflict.I usually find myself quietly disappointed with war movies in general, and their vain, highly stylized, cliché-laden attempts to realistically portray infantry warfare, and high-intensity warfare's effects on soldiers.
Film-makers invariably seem to fall far short in their attempts to capture the essence of what war can be (or was) like, and what exposure to it can do to the people involved, both mentally and physically.To his great credit, I think that in Passchendaele Paul Gross seems to have actually managed to capture a reasonably authentic glimpse into both the nature of such hellish environments and the men caught up in them.The acting was superb.
The performances were so convincing that the notion that I was just sitting watching a movie didn't even occur to me until the credits began to roll by, I was so totally engrossed.This film was easily one of the best that I've seen in quite some time.I'll definitely be keeping my eyes open for any future films by Paul Gross.
The film tries to be a war movie and a romance, but succeeds in neither and has to resort to visual clichés of the poorest kind, and a plot tissue-paper thin .
The battle scenes (which this reviewer sees as an extension certain characters' intricacies and depth) rival, if not surpass, those that were offered to us by Spielberg in the opening sequences of Saving Private Ryan.The film conveys passion and desire amongst the insurmountable propriety of the times, in contrast to the preponderance of human connection within a tempestuous social climate.
A Good Romance in Times of War. In 1917, in the World War I, the veteran Sergeant Michael Dunne (Paul Gross) is wounded in the front and is nursed by Nurse Sarah Mann (Caroline Dhavernas).
Apart from the short five to ten minutes which opens the film there are no other scenes of battle, and the movie is better for it.What Paul Gross has attempted here is to give Canadians their own war epic (and on a minuscule budget when compared to most Hollywood war films).
It's something like a far, far better version of what Michael Bay was doing with "Pearl Harbor"; the film is an unabashed romance and period drama, with Passchendaele being not the focus, but the event at the end of the road which the audience knows is coming.Paul Gross has achieved something with "Passchendaele".
More than just that, "Passchendaele" is a love letter to Canada, and although I might be biased as a Calgarian and Albertan (where the film is set), I think that every Canadian will find a reason to be proud in this film, in spite of the fact that it's depicting a war where nobody really knew what they were fighting for.
There isn't a moment in this film where the characters don't feel real, where the story doesn't affect you, where the romance doesn't feel genuine (including a love scene which could have been laughable but ended up being one of the year's most beautiful scenes)."Passchendaele" is Paul Gross' heart poured onto the screen.
I honestly don't know if there's anything here for non-Canadians, although I imagine the film is populist enough to entertain most people (there's even a healthy dose of well-written humor, and the movie has one line so hilarious and yet oddly seductive that I'll probably never forget it).
Less importantly perhaps it is a tribute to Calgary and Alberta (only a Calgarian could have made this film), and more importantly it's a tribute to the pure, certain feeling of true love, to our war veterans, to the troops currently fighting in Afghanistan, to all Canadians, and ultimately and most importantly to Canada..
If you are expecting a good war movie, don't bother with this one, it is more of a love story chick flick than anything else.
I guess everyone feels this should be a great movie because it depicts Canadian soldiers in a battle that has not received the attention it deserved.
The production alone for Saving Private Ryan was $65 million dollars, more than 3 times that of Passchendaele.Also, I don't think Paul Gross disrespected any of the individuals who lost their lives during the battle as a result of dedicating the movie to his grandfather.
One of the reasons the movie was created in the first place was because of Paul Gross' grandfather, who fought with the 10th Battalion CEF (Canadian Expeditionary Force) during the First World War. He first became interested in the war as a result of listening to his grandfather's stories, and some of the lines in the movie came directly from his grandfather's words.If Passchendaele had the same budget as Saving Private Ryan, I can only imagine what Paul Gross could have done with it..
There are so many other countries that deserve to be remembered for their part in WW1, WW2 and other wars.The movie itself had a interesting start, a great story, and ending with a good idea of what it was like to be a solider in WW1.
Hollywood has monopolized the war cinema since the beginnings of that art.As a consequence, I estimate that the 80% of the war movies include the heroic North American army doing their thing, from defending the world of the Nazis and the Japanese during World War II; taking drugs and reflecting on human existence during the Vietnam war; or conciliating contradictory orders during an unnecessary conflict inspired by the oil.So, I always find it interesting when a movie reflects similar circumstances, but examined from a fresher and less known focus.I think my favorite movie in that sub-genus is Zwartboek, and even though Passchendaele is far away from that level of excellence, I liked it pretty much.Inspired by his grandfather's experience in Belgium, Paul Gross decided to write, direct and star in this movie, obtaining considerable economical support...at least inside the parameters of Canadian cinema.The result is a movie which predictably feels very personal, but a bit indulgent on some occasions; for example, a sequence near the ending which pretends to incorporate a forced religious allegory did not convince me very much.Otherwise, this film kept me pretty interested the whole time, and I appreciated that it moved a bit away from the war clichés we have seen in North American cinema.I also liked the development from the characters, and their diverse motivations.Besides, as in real life, there is not an easy answer to the eternal disjunctive of the war as a necessary evil or as a noble activity.The villains from this film tend to raise the patriotism as a justification of every atrocity; and even though the heroes suffer from the horrors of the armed conflict, they cannot ignore the necessity of defending the freedom from those who threaten to snatch it.In summary, despite not being a great film, I can give a safe recommendation to Passchendaele, because of its interesting story, credible characters, competent performances and fascinating historical context..
This was actively promoted as a Canadian WWI movie - however, I felt there wasn't enough time spent focusing on the actual war.I did enjoy this movie and appreciate what Paul Gross has attempted to do.
War movies are not exactly a typical Canadian genre, and so I've been wanting to see "Passchendaele" for some time.
Both the opening - depicting Sgt. Dunne's role in an unnamed battle - and the closing - which follows Dunne and Mann through a portion of the Battle of Passchendaele - are graphic and believable representations of battle, and they provide a sobering view of war, which may be necessary (that's another debate for another time) but is certainly neither glorious nor noble, although the individual soldiers who fight may well be both.
That story is interesting, but it's slow pace is quite a contrast to the chaos of the battle scenes - perhaps appropriately so - and makes this part of the movie seem perhaps even slower than it really is.The performances from the two main leads (Paul Gross as Dunne, and Caroline Dhavernas as Sarah, the nurse he falls in love with) were excellent.
I expected a romantic sub-plot but it turned out to be the whole story.I was not looking for a "war movie" a-la "Saving Private Ryan" or "Platoon" but I was hoping for at least some historical perspective with regards to the battle was severely disappointed.
I got more of a sense of the historic event from the old photographs that played with the credits at the end of the movie than from the film itself.Script : OK Acting : OK Title, advertising, trailer and everything else about the movie : totally and completely misleading.Do not see this movie if you want a sense of what Paaschendale was really like or about.
This film does get you thinking!Of course this is no Band Of Brothers in terms of scale (I know that's World War Two) but Paul Gross has done extremely well acting and directly.
With regards to the low budget the battle scenes could have been bigger and better but this is by no means a bad film.The acting and casting is spot on and this film really does show the stupid ill placed passion and faulted logic of young people in this era and, it shows the pressure many had to go through and be forced to fight for freedom not knowing what the loses and costs would be.
Paul Gross wrote, directed and stars in this ambitious (yet still very CBC feeling) epic, following the exploits of the Canadian soldiers who fought in one of the key battles of World War 1 in 1917.
The story follows Gross as a troubled veteran, his nurse girlfriend and a naïve boy who intersect first in Alberta and then through the bloody battle of Passchendaele.You can just tell that Paul Gross put his heart and soul into this and I really, really wanted to be impressed, finally getting the Canadian side of events after so many WW1 movies that just deal with the American or British.
Unfortunately though its not great.Yeah it has its moments, it's visually impressive, the battle scenes are very well done, the trench warfare, the mud, the rain, the carnage and I got very caught up in the ending despite myself but this is also melodramatic at times, kinda choppy and (as I said) has a made for TV feel despite the big budget.
This could have been a great anti war film but it turns out to be a Canadian Pearl Harbor (Michael Bay's that is) drama with an overblown love story and sometimes terrible dialogs.
then this film will do that, whilst providing a glimpse of love, separation, racial hatred, and war mongering.Actually, vis a vis 'love' it's a bit more than a glimpse, but hey; see paragraph 2.The youngsters will get to see a truly first class battlefield 'set', and hence the deserved (overall) 2 stars as a WW1 movie.
PASSCHENDAELE is a throwback to the kind of war movies made by John Wayne, albeit with a hero in the throes of neurasthenia (PTSD) for having needlessly killed a young German soldier in a particularly cruel fashion.
I wanted the characters to have more of a love story while the movie spent time on the home front in Canada.
The movie in my opinion was actually pretty, there was great fighting scene at the end, and there is a love story in between.
The only part of the movie that I didn't like was that it really wasn't based to Passchendaele, I mean it is a bit disrespectful to the 600,000 thousand people who when to war for Canada.
I was watching a movie and I knew it.As a film, a romance story set in the backdrop of war, it is not a bad one.
As a Great War Living History reenactor I was very interested to see this movie.There was a very long lead up to the major combat at the end - to follow the "Private Ryan" comparison, you start and end with some intense combat footage, and a fairly slow-moving story for the rest of the time.
However, the depiction of combat was first rate, showing the brutality of hand to hand fighting in the trenches (also fairly accurately depicted as strings of mud filled shell craters) Not all a saccharin-sweet romance, and certainly not the worst such movie I have ever seen; but it would be nice to see a story of the standard of "All Quiet On the Western Front" with the benefit of modern special effects that can allow the combat depictions to be more realistic.Overall there seemed be some inaccuracies in the uniforms and equipment, although little that anyone not heavily into the history of such matters would notice or care about.
A lot of the characters were 2 dimensional - the English major esp was the kind of stereotype that one would expect in a US film - sadly even people here seem to fall into that - one reviewer wrote "It was the Canadians who did all the real hard work in this war" - sorry it was the British Army and French Army who fought from day 1 that took the heaviest casualties - not to diminish the role of the ANZAC troops - but there is no need to disrespect our war dead either and rather like the anti-Monty comment in Saving Private Ryan, the whole blundering British thing is a cheap shot - ultimately it was the development of a early combined arms doctrine esp in the British Army in 1918 using tanks, artillery etc along with all the Allies that broke the German Army.
The film also seemed overly full of clichés and cinematic coincidences etc - the crucifixion scene at the end particularly especially, given that earlier on, Sgt Dunne comments that the 1915 Canadian crucified soldier story is just that - and then he (as director) goes and repeats it - it makes no sense as having crucified that annoying git, the German NCO/officer then lets him be returned to the Canadian lines!
Other than the name of the film and the brilliant (albeit way too short) battle at the end I just don't see this as the tribute Canada's bravest deserve.I think for a Canadian movie, technically it was superb from an effects standpoint.
But just to make sure that the audience understands the scale of justice and the stupidity of war, Director Gross has to hit us over the head with the symbol: shell shocked or wounded young Germans, kids in fact; remember, the good sergeant killed one in the heat of battle.
This is a love story for all time and I thank Mr. Gross for itPerhaps the best way I can express how much the film moved me is to say that at the conclusion of the movie; as the credits rolled by accompanied by actual Canadian footage from the "War to End All Wars", no one in the audience spoke or moved.
Paul Gross nails this movie by showing you what it was like to fight in a trench war, in the mud and amongst your friends bodies.
After all why did we come to Canada, but to escape from the European way of life?Battle scenes are properly gruesome, but otherwise illogically worse than anything I've seen in American war movies.
I wish they could of been around to see this film, they would of been proud of the job Paul Gross did.Passchendaele is the story of Canada's contribution to the Great War. It takes place after Vimy Ridge and begins with Michael Dunne in the middle of a firefight with the Germans.
Isn't this a movie to depict the tribulations of Canadian soldiers at the battle of Passchendaele?
Eventually, everybody ends up back in France in time for the battle.Overall, I'd say it's a pretty good effort (and, for a Canadian film, there weren't any moments where they appeared to be insufficiently budgeted, which is a feat in an of itself), although the tone of the production is inconsistent; some parts (the love story, principally) are very sentimental, while others (the battle scenes, which may be the most realistic depiction of World War I trench combat that I've yet seen, as well as a lot of the depiction of wartime homefront society) are determinedly unsentimental (there are at least two moments involving corpses that either must have been described in a letter or else Gross has a very disturbed imagination).
Great movie, if a little lacking in actual war scenes..
Plus, I wanted to support our Canadian film industry.Well, aside from the last battle scene at the end of the movie, which was quite effective and did move me (I didn't realize how brutal the fighting was back then), I have to say I was very disappointed in this film.