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The Trench
**
Cinema
Releases - September 17, 1999
Rated on a 4-star
scale. UK. Written and directed by William Boyd. Starring Paul Nicholls,
Daniel Craig, Julian Rhind-Tutt, Danny Dyer, James D'Arcy, Tam Williams,
Anthony Strachan.
A mile from the Belgian border and a million miles
from the rest of the world, the Battle of the Somme was the most horrifying
chapter of slaughter in the history of the First World War. For more than
five months, over half a million British men were sent like ants to a trap
towards an easily-defended line of German machine guns. General Douglas Haig,
the man behind the operation, insisted his mad decisions were sound, despite
never once visiting the battlefield or receiving a report of
progress.
William Boyd's "The Trench" takes
place in the midst of the Somme, but wants to communicate the story without
telling it. Text about the fighting opens and closes the picture, while the
bulk of the running time deals with anxious anticipation in days previous
to the first attack.
This concept, in itself, is hardly scintillating.
Would there were some interesting drama! The main character is cherubic Private
Billy MacFarlane, who enlisted at age 17 to accompany his older brother Eddie.
Now, however, the sibling has been sent home with "a Blighty one", and Billy
has nothing to do but fantasise about a post-office clerk and wait for his
number to be called. Meanwhile, Sergeant Winter, the tee-total professional
soldier who keeps the fatigued men in line, develops ominous suspicions about
the impending fight, and grows ever more longing for his absent family. Winter's
opposite, the weak Lieutenant Harte, simply turns to the bottle and hides
from as many men as possible.
Writer-director Boyd, while making all of this
clear, never actually does much with it. His characters' situations are
illustrated, but not explored or developed, only repeated. Even specific
actions seem to be recurring -- Billy is always gazing in one direction;
Harte's tasks are looking horrified, shivering and swigging from a hip flask;
Winter loves nothing more than a smoke and a grimace, except for one scene
where he devours a jar of home-made strawberry jam.
Understandably listless with the empty characters
they've been given, the cast can't be bothered creating careful performances,
and embellish every unimportant line as if this were a stage play. It feels
like one in other respects, too, since the sound and production design rarely
create a convincing sense of atmosphere. "The Trench" is a one-set piece,
and that set is embarrassingly synthetic.
Aside from the ludicrous feel of the ambience,
the lack of satisfying content causes "The Trench" to be very boring. I don't
know how to create tedium in a 90-minute war movie, especially when stealing
so many shots from Peter Weir's powerful "Gallipoli", but these filmmakers
manage it, and at one point I realised a horrible thing: I wanted everyone
to get shot, just to see something happen.
COPYRIGHT© 1999 Ian
Waldron-Mantgani
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