The only reason I watched was for the gay subtext, which was intense and probably deliberate. We begin with young World War I soldiers Will (George MacKay, below) and Tom (Dean-Charles Chapman. left) lying under a tree in an idyllic meadow, far from the trenches. Why did they sneak off? What had they been up to?
Their commanding officer calls them in and tells them that there's a problem. Colonel Mackenzie of the Second Battalion thinks that the Germans are retreating, and plans an attack tomorrow at dawn. But it's really a trap, and all 1,600 soldiers will be killed. The telephone lines are down, so Will and Tom must travel nine miles across the hostile German-occupied countryside to give him the order to stop the attack. In less than 24 hours.
They start out. And the terrible things start piling onto each other.
1. They cross a no man's land of mud and corpses that look like zombies from The Walking Dead.
2. Will hurts his hand on barbed wire.
3. They look for food in abandoned German barracks (didn't they pack some rations?), but it's a trap. A bomb explodes next to Will, killing him.
4. I guess not. He's fine. Next, they stop at an abandoned farmhouse. A disabled German airplane crashes into it. They rescue the pilot, who stabs Tom. Long, agonizing death scene.
For his final wishes, aside from "Stay with me while I die!", Tom asks that Will write the letter to his mother announcing his death, and give his brother Joseph, who is with the Second Battalion, his rings and dog tags.
5. Will catches a ride with some sarcastic comic-relief soldiers. The truck gets stuck in the mud, so he helps them push it, and is covered in mud.
6. The bridge is out, so he has to carefully tight-rope his way across the river, and gets soaked.
7. The abandoned town is not abandoned. Will encounters a sniper, who shoots and kills him. There are about 30 seconds of darkness while I wait for the closing credits to start.
8. He was just knocked unconscious (by a gunshot?).. When he awakens, it is nearly dawn. After giving a refugee girl some milk for her baby, Will runs, chased by about a thousand German soldiers who are really bad shots, to another river.
9. He falls in, struggles against the current, and finally plummets over the world's biggest waterfall to his death.
10. I guess not. Somehow Will survives, and is finally stopped by a dam of floating corpses. He hears a male voice singing "The Wayfaring Stranger," and makes his waty to a clearing in the woods, where the Second Battalion is...um...enjoying a concert?
11. Now he has to rush through about a hundred miles of soldiers, pushing people aside, yelling "Where is Colonel Mackenzie?", and being told "Farther up" so many times that it goes beyond funny to ridiculous. Finally he reaches the Colonel and convinces him to read the order and stop the troops.
12. Where's Tom's brother (Richard Madden)? Oh, he was in the first wave, so he's already rushed into his death.
Psych! He's fine. Will gives him the bad news about Tom, delivers the rings and dog tags, and shakes his hand.
Then Will finds a meadow and sits under what looks like the same tree from the first scene.
He takes out some photos of someone's wife and daughter. His or Tom's -- I can't be sure, because neither of them mentioned a wife, or looked at a photo of a wife, or expressed any intereste in women whatsoever, not even in a dirty joke.
What's going on? Did the writers say "Oh, wait, we forgot to demonstrate that Will and Tom are straight." So two hours of obvious gay subtext are ruined by a final, fleeting shot of The Eternal Feminine.
And I sat through two hours of torture porn for nothing.
I should call my old pastor. He'll definitely find this movie "a gem."
I had the same feeling that Tom and Will are a romantic couple which makes more sense- also I love period set gay love stories. But this is more a suspense film than a war romance and it is based on the experience of the director's grandfather. But in the slash fiction version Tom and Will are lovers
ReplyDeleteMaybe Grandpa had a boyfriend during the War -- and afterwards. He could have been bi, or gay and marrying out of social necessity. But you are right, there were no mainstream action/adventure movies with explicitly LGBT protagonists before "Deadpool" (2015), and he just sort of hinted that he was bisexual.
DeleteBoomer you make an interesting point about the grandfather's love life. Have you seen "Man in the Orange Shirt"(2017)? The first and best part deals with a war time gay romance.
DeleteI'm afraid my tastes in film run more toward comedy.
DeleteFrankly during that period the great romances were between men.
DeleteI'm convinced women exist in war movies just to remind us the main characters are heterosexual.
Interesting about Deadpool. I've always wondered if his being bi was a reference to how Deathstroke evolved since 2003. (Basically Devin Grayson put so much subtext into the Renegade arc. It's gross when you remember Nightwing and Jericho were practically canon in the 80s, but it is what it is.)
In the classic Hollywood war movie tradition going back to "Wings" there is always a woman thrown in to the mix so that yes we don't think the boys are really the lovers
DeleteTrust me Boomer- the beefcake hotness of Oliver Jackson-Cohen and the gay love scenes are worth watching "Man in the Orange Shirt"
ReplyDelete