"'Passchendaele' Movie - the horror..." Topic

Just watched Passchendaele. What the %*$@ was that? Managed to consist of solid cheese all the way through, then jumped the shark into this kind of la la land that was beyond hallucenogenic total bullshine & way way way out the other side… Made Apocalypse Now look like Lost in Translation. It was amazing. Makes Springtime for Hitler look straight.

How the hen does stuff like this get made?

I thought it was pretty lame too.

Darn… we really need more good WWI movies, not dreck like "Flyboys". Has anyone seen "My Boy Jack", with Harry Potter?

I watch it and didn't like it either.

I thought it was terrific. It was actually filmed at Kipling's house. Young Mr. Potter did a great job as young Mr. Kipling. The conclusion was heart-rending.

Dang, had hopes for that movie way back when….

Made in 2004, but new to me, is Company K. I found this quite interesting. Low budget but nothing weird. Good shots of equipment.

Another great opportunity lost to a need to put love crap in a war movie.

These directors need to watch Saving Private Ryan a few times.

I thought PRIVATE RYAN was dire. The love plot was bad enough but when it turned into 'deeply moving profound mystical symbolism' it went beyond lame and into undeath. or something. Apocalypse Now by Catherine Cookson

I was intrigued by the Canadians waiting for the automaton Germans to get into grenade throwing range before shooting at them – except the Germans didn't through any grenades.

I also like the way the athsmatic boy could sprint up a hill, fall off a cliff & then climb out of a river, avoid having an attack & launch straight into a big argument.

My mate Jim Clark just emailed me to agree it's hit, but says he's heard of a film called
Under Hill 60 which is supposed to be good

I missed the Harry Potter MY BOY JACK on TV but we saw a good production in our local Little Theatre. It's a superb drama about the Great War, the only downside was a trench set so low their heads & shoulders stuck over the parapet, & steel helmets at the battle of Loos. But the scene where the eye-witness of Jack's death is trying to relate it to Rudyard is a par exemplar of the difficulty traumatised combat vets have of communicating with 'the Home Front'

It wasn't too bad until the very end, when it started to foam at the mouth and threatened to bite everybody. The film had to be put down shortly thereafter.

Hill 60 looks good from the previews, it had minimal theatre time here in Australia, I'm waiting for the DVD. The previews felt like 'The Light Horsemen'.

Not a good idea if you are claustrophobic, its about the tunnelling 'war' in Flanders.

How do you film that? They were talking about a film of BIRDSONG too, I couldn't see how you depict the tunnels on film

"I thought PRIVATE RYAN was dire. The love plot was bad enough "

Sorry that should read:

"I thought PRIVATE RYAN was dire.

The love plot [in PASSCHENDAELE] was bad enough …"

Paul Gross takes himself far to seriously, and unfortunately has a lot of clout with those wanting to make Canadian entertainment.

I am tempted to show up with some WW1 reeactors covered in flour looking like ghosts and pointing fingers at people who screw up WW1 movies.

You. YOU! You made us look like idiots…

I hadn't expected a detailed documentary in Passchendaele, so I rather enjoyed it. Nice to see a Canadian war movie of any sort! We usually get overloaded with American crap!

Thanks to all posters as I was thinking of buying Passchendale and you've saved me a few quid.

We usually get overloaded with American crap!
>>
American crap??

Thats exactly what that abortion Passchendaele was! I waited till it came out on DVD and actually paid hard earned money for it!
I saw a making of in Millitary Illustrated awhile back and it looked incredible!

Yeah right!!

Bob

Apparently the LOST BATTALION is a very good, historically accurate AMERICAN war movie.

ashill- if you only pay £3.00 GBP like I did, its money well spent. It is compellingly, entertainingly dire, not like say THE ENGLISH PATIENT which just bores you senseless as well as being hit.

PASSCHENDAELE does have good cinemaphotography. The Mud landscape is beautifully realised, its just a shame you then get Germans counterattacking Canadians who are helplessly pinned down before their trenches by running at them with bayonets like Zulus. Then the Canadians wait until they are in grenade distance before shooting – except the Germans don't throw any. And then…

Well, that's the 'jumped the shark' bit which I wouldn't want to spoil for anyone yet to watch it

I was also intrigued as to how the love interest managed to spend so much time jacking up & going without sleep while remaining well-fleshed, rosy complexioned etc. & I was really impressed with the sex in a shed scene. Clear proof women don't need fore-play or indeed more than about 20 seconds attention. Bloody good trick if they could draw us diagrams (Unless outside shot he was supposed to be injecting her with opiates, see above)

Passchendaele's legacy may be to make it far more difficult for anyone else to make a big-budget (for Canada) Canadian war film. That said, the film was evidently a commercial success, and widely viewed – as this thread indicates. Its qualities – or lack thereof – as a film notwithstanding, it may better than nothing. The cheese factor was on a par with bigger budget doozies – Pearl Harbor? Braveheart? – with fewer extras and pyrotechnics. It's a small consolation, perhaps, to be no more egregious than Michael Bay or Mel.

Braveheart was fine as a mediaeval fantasy, about a figure who it would be difficult to make an authentic film about for paucity of information. He is pretty well a 'legendary figure'

It would not be hard to make a moving drama – fictional or factual- about Canadians in 1917 without the melodrama, shocking screen-writing & shark-jumping. In fact its hard to imagine how such resources could be agreed for a project showing so little awareness & sensitivity to such issues.

OK, a lot of people went to see it (=commercial success) but then the trailers must have looked awesome. But what was the critical feedback from either the critics or the movie-going populace? Was anyone going "Oooo yes the Crucified Canadian motif was so deep I was profoundly moved?" Or were they all spitting popcorn?

Critical feedback – in terms of reviews etc – was politely muted, I think, with several warm endorsements sprinkled in (cheers for effort and so forth). There were few rave reviews, and much specialist groaning (all of it well-deserved) from historians, enthusiasts, gamers, and so on. In other words, perhaps not quite expectorated popcorn all around, but awfully close.

American crap??

Thats exactly what that abortion Passchendaele was!

Oh, great, now the Americans are trying to hijack our crap!

Swear to God, it's 100% Canuck crapola. We can produce crap with the best of them. Hell, some of the worst crap in US entertainment is made in Canada as well.

FigKeeper,

I seem to remember it differently. It opened up at the Toronto Film Festival to poor reviews. It then got lukewarm to poor reviews in the papers. Who gave it raves?

It was a very disappointing film with only a few good things:

1)The opening scenes.
2)The "evil" recruiter and the pressure brought to bear on the Canadian young men.
3)The cinematography.

CooperSteveontheLaptop is correct. Was there ever a more heavy handed, craptacular ending to a battle scene? I doubt it.

Ralph

I wasn't thrilled with The Lost Battalion,but only because of uniform authenticity and whatnot,not the story..

Yeah,I fell for the trailer on this one. that ending is right up there with that other not so well known WW2 flick,A Midnight Clear.
Rent that one if you dare! Given FIVE Stars by the NY Times back in the mid 90's! Its BAD!

Bob

"The "evil" recruiter "

Sorry, the plummy evil Brit stereotype was a high point??? I thought he was a prime example of no cliche of pure cheese unmined

Sorry, how were the opening scenes with 4 Canadians (on their own) fighting 4 Germans (on their own with a MG08) in a ruined town (Such a lot of street fighting in 1917) close followed by the solid cheese 'wounded solidier wakes up & gets infatuated with the nurse' actually good? & everyone knows you don't just puch a bayonet through someone's forehead, you'd go in through the eye sockets.

But your third point about the cinemaphotography was fair- it was well-filmed, shame about the content

Although there were issues round the use of effects & stunts. The first time you see the 'tossed by a shell blast' it's good but then it gets used over and over until it just becomes a motif. Similarly the hand-to-hand brawling is something you don't see in Trench films (OK it should have been happening in the trench, not the middle of no-mans land) but again it just got over-done until it turned into a balletic set-piece.

Hi Ralph,

Several of the industry reviewers actually endorsed it, a view not shared by most of those mere mortals who suffered through it, so your recollection is actually more or less the same as mine. Throwing the makers a bone because of good mud, nice explosions, and appropriately ratty, soiled WWI uniforms is as backhanded as compliments can get, but they'd be about the only kudos commonly offered by most critics. That said, many films get even these wrong, so faint praise is perhaps better than none at all.

I can forgive a bad film that tells a good story or (more rarely) a good story trapped in a bad film, but not both at once, and Passchendaele was that for me – a poorly conceived film with characters about whom I did not care all that much (because they were poorly drawn, terribly acted, and unbelievably deployed) blundering about in a dreadful script. It actually takes some dedication to purpose to make Canada's 1917 flat and uninteresting – Vimy Ridge, Hill 70, conscription and political intrigue, Passchendaele, Union government and later the most searing federal election in the country's history – so this rendering was, sadly, a rather grand and consistently presented accomplishment.

And yet I watched it twice, was moved by the star's dedication in making it to the history about which he feels deeply passionate (he had a close family collection to the war), and proud that the film's backers were able to raise money for a large-budget Canadian war film. Meteors strike downtown Toronto with slightly greater frequency. It was a deeply disappointing movie – awful in some respects – about which good things can still be said. There is great value, in the end, in telling important stories in commercial media, even when the result is less than I'd have liked. I hope its legacy is that enough people bought tickets so that future efforts will be forthcoming; I fear that it was sufficiently bad that no one will be able to try again on this scale for a very long time.

Guys, I have two questions about WW 1 movies. Has anybody seen "Stosstrupp" made in 1934? and "Capitaine Conan" made in the mid 90's? The first one is about German trench fighters and the second is about a French officer and his command!

Capitaine Conan? Was he mighty thewed & a freebooter, a reaver etc etc?

Cooper; I don't think so!

Shame, he would have crushed the 2nd Reich beneath his sandalled feet, hewed the Kaiser in half with his battle-axe & usurped his throne.

"nice explosions,"

They were OK but still looked like pyroes going off underground

It's a rare bird, but if you can find Hedd Wyn anywhere, it's a good film.

Nominated for an Oscar (foreign language, being in Welsh).

Not many combat scenes, but good for the home front and training.

Did anyone like "The Blue Max" ? I did!

Hedd Wyn is ace!

Watch out for the dashing, devastatingly handsome and heroic, moustachioed young officer who steals all the scenes he's in…

;o)

Here he is in action – note the heroic and determined tilt of the walking stick… link

Capitaine Conan is a very good film about a man made for war whose inability to adjust to peacetime undoes him. It's a very good film.