Ryan McNeil
Mid-way through Paul Gross’ PASSCHENDAELE, the war-torn battle ground is described as “A muddy stew”. That very sentiment could describe this movie as a whole quite accurately.
PASSCHENDAELE is an ambitious film, one that takes ordinary Canadians in the early 20th century, and cuts their lives to ribbons as World War I casts a shadow over them all. Gross plays Sgt. Michael Dunne, who has returned home to Calgary shell-shocked from his experiences on the front lines. Like many a war film before, our broken soldier finds himself falling in love with his attending nurse Sarah (Caroline Dhavernas). Making both Dunne and Sarah’s lives difficult is Sarah’s younger brother David (Joe Dinicol – who looks like his first line of the film should be “Hello, I’m a Mac”). David wants to serve, neither Dunne nor Sarah want him to enlist. He does anyway and the story unfolds from there.
PASSCHENDAELE is riddled with problems. There’s a heavy handed score, about five war cliches too many, and a visual metaphor that had me waiting for an usher to come tap me on the shoulder and whisper “This is important”. The story stays in the home front way too long – which is compounded by the fact that this part of the film looks like a typically Canadian film. Every scene is shot with “CBC Lighting”: drenched in white window light for daytime scenes, painted with orange lamplight for evenings.
With all of that in mind though, I wouldn’t discount PASSCHENDAELE altogether. The war sequences are brutal, unflinching, and extremely intense. WWI has faded from more than a few people’s memories, and PASSCHENDAELE does great things to remind them of how violent these battles really were. There is also some great writing at hand, though too much of it is in the form of throw-a-way lines (“Jesus didn’t save us from our sins, he only gave us the template”). For me the crowning moment came when Dunne was asked what concerns a soldier most; answer : “Keeping your matches dry.”
Indeed the movie is a mess, but it’s a well intended mess that is worth look. PASSCHENDAELE will screen once more at TIFF and hits Canadian theatres this fall.