But if you can stomach the suspense and brutality, it’s definitely worth a watch. With the obvious bloody implications that come from putting young boys into a minefield it’s not for the faint of heart. Aerial shots, sweeping but not too ambitious, occasionally pop up alongside landscape stills or limpid longshots, creating a beautifully desolate image that complements the storyline.Ĭoncise, poignant, and captivating, Land of Mine offers a novel yet intuitive glimpse of a war we see quite often on film. The Danish landscape it’s set in, with its gray-tinged skies, expansive flat grasslands, and beautifully barren coastline, contributes heavily towards this feeling. Tonally, the film is also rather muted and melancholy. On account of its more limited physical scope (a single beach), a deeper emphasis on a smaller set of characters, and its Danish setting (though not unscathed, Denmark experienced less direct German brutality than other occupied countries such as those on the Eastern Front), it’s also less controversial piece than other Axis-centered WWII productions like the German miniseries Generation War. They, too, are the victims, caught up in a struggle with inhuman, impersonal forces that have no regard for nationality or age. The Germans in Land of Mine are depicted in a sympathetic light–they’re just boys, after all, not even fully matured. You could also say that the film also humanizes the Axis side of WWII. Land of Mine is one of those rare movies that keeps your complete attention for its entire length. Even in times of rest and reflection during the film, you’re still in “alert mode”. With such a large set of young characters and a storyline that promotes empathy and character development, in Land of Mine it is simultaneously nail-biting and devastating to always know in the back of your mind that anyone could be the next to go. I’m beginning to consider avoiding any mine-related movies after watching both Land of Mine and the British Afghan War film Kajaki the suspense is way too much to handle. Naive pitiable youths, a stern sergeant who’s supposed to be their enemy, a literal minefield– Land of Mine takes full advantage of this perfect storm of dramatic ingredients. After that, Rasmussen promises them, they can go home. Barely adults and completely inexperienced with mines, the Germans must clear a beach of 45,000 of them. The ensuing story is dark, yes, but anything except humorous.Īt the film’s center are a group of young German POWs and a grizzled Danish Sergeant, Carl Rasmussen, assigned to supervise them. Its English title is a darkly humorous play on words that hints at its main themes - what it means to go “home”, and well, the effects of landmines. The 2015 Danish-German co-production Land of Mine dramatizes this little-known part of post-WWII history. In a cruel twist of fate, after the war, Danish authorities conscripted over 2,000 German Prisoners of War to clear out these minefields in violation of the Geneva Conventions over half of those POWs lost their lives or limbs. A strong good performance from Møller.During World War II, German troops laid almost two million landmines along Denmark’s west coast. It stars Armie Hammer as a United States Marine who steps on a land mine. Is this fair? Who knows? After a while, the mine clearance, like the building of the bridge on the River Kwai, reveals new relationships. Mine is a 2016 psychological thriller war film written and directed by Fabio Guaglione and. The Danish officers above Rasmussen are, like him, motivated by icy resolution and retributive cruelty, but it is the British officers (whose idea it was) who are depicted as pure sadists. Roland Møller plays Rasmussen, a grizzled and brutal Danish army sergeant who oversees a work-party of teenage German conscripts, utterly contemptuous of them at first. This terrifying and suicidally dangerous job was technically proscribed for captured enemy combatants under the Geneva conventions but the Danish authorities thought it was what the Germans deserved. After the Nazi surrender in 1945, thousands of German PoWs were forced to clear the Danish coastline of the mines that Hitler had ordered be placed there, made to crawl through the sand, gently easing thin metal wands into it to find the evil devices. A tough, well-made war movie – sometimes shockingly violent – about a little known and very grim moment at the end of the second world war.
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