Land of Mine ★★★
AFTER watching the Danish drama Land of Mine I started thinking about other ‘land mine themed’ movies.
I came up with three: Oscar-winner The Hurt Locker, low-budget Kajaki from a couple of years ago and Land Mine Goes Click, a minor horror film.
Why, when this film has been so universally praised, did my thoughts immediately go to other films and a silly list.
Two reasons. Firstly, it was a quick way to lighten the depressing weight of the film’s narrative. Basically, we had just spent nearly two hours waiting for bombs to go off in peoples’ faces – another fun Friday night at the movies.
Secondly, and more importantly, while I admired the craft, the characterisation had not been rich enough to fully connect with the young German soldiers forced to dismantle thousands of unexploded mines left on the beaches of Denmark after World War II.
Yes, the soldiers looked very young and vulnerable, but they were also part of a war machine that had collective responsibility in many peoples’ eyes for causing millions of deaths; their lives, like those they had murdered, no longer mattered.
Guiding us through this moral minefield is a hardened and seemingly embittered Danish paratroop regiment sergeant who is given control over one of the groups of German soldiers, now effectively still Prisoners of War, forced to dismantle the mines before being allowed to return to their own country.
And herein lies another key issue with the film. At no stage are we ever taken beneath the surface, deeper into this man’s experiences, in order to understand his motivations. For example, at one point in the film his sentiments appear to have changed, but suddenly one incident leads him to embark on a path that represents exactly the opposite.
It’s hard to explain without spoiling parts of the film, suffice to say I needed to know more about these characters than the script provided. On the plus side, the performances are all good and there are sequences of great tension and some horror.
Not the easiest of watches, but worth streaming. As far as my land mine themed movies go, it ranks third behind The Hurt Locker and Kajaki.