The battleground in veteran Italian director Gianni Amelio’s atmospheric characteristic is nominally Europe within the final furlong of the 1914-18 battle, however the actual topic is the struggle that the Italian authorities declared by itself folks. There are features of this all-too-true story, based mostly loosely on Carlo Patriarca’s 2020 novel The Problem, that can resonate all through the world, and one would possibly suppose that post-Vietnam America could be particularly receptive to a narrative in regards to the callous deployment of younger, blue-collar males into savage conflicts from which they’ll virtually actually by no means return. Amelio’s movie, nevertheless, whereas good for the native market, isn’t precisely prone to cross over.
The director units the scene with grim photos of our bodies piled greater and better in bleak muddy trenches. The yr is 1918, and the armistice is simply across the nook, however nobody on the entrance line can probably know that but. Troopers go by way of the corpses, and although we give them the good thing about the doubt (are they searching for indicators of life?), it quickly transpires that these males are simply opportunistic thieves, relieving the lifeless of their wallets and greedily snaffling the stale crusts they discover of their pockets.
Some, nevertheless, have survived towards the percentages, and we observe them to a navy hospital run by Stefano (Gabriel Montesi) and his second in command, Giulio (Alessandro Borghi). Stefano and Giulio got here up by way of medical college collectively, however their attitudes to their sufferers couldn’t be extra totally different. Stefano, from a higher-class household, despises nearly all of the boys that he sees within the wards: misfits and losers, he calls them, regardless that he impacts to deal with each soldier — whether or not hero or coward — the identical. Giulio, nevertheless, has different concepts, not solely rejecting Stefano’s merciless authoritarianism however, as we’re about to search out out, actively undermining it.
Stefano is a really attention-grabbing villain, a succesful physician who despises the sick and wounded. He patrols the wards searching for the fakers (he calls them “These disgusting curs”), males who exaggerate their accidents and even hurt themselves to get despatched house. “When the struggle ends,” he says, “the sincere and most valorous males will all be lifeless.” He quickly sniffs out those that have staged their very own accidents and revels in sending them again to the entrance line. The righteously wounded, nevertheless, get his reward — one man, coated in bandages, particularly. “You’ll get a medal,” beams Stefano. “Are you able to repair my face?” pleads the person, addressing a priority that’s a lot, a lot nearer to his coronary heart.
Sacrifice is a giant theme in Battleground, and Amelio’s predominant thesis is that this: How a lot of a sacrifice are you truly making if another person is making you make it? Isn’t that homicide? That is the place Guilio is available in, and his character is totally fascinating: his mission assertion, as per the Hippocratic Oath, is to avoid wasting human lives, however the lengths he goes to are excessive (and essentially so, within the circumstances). Guilio recommends amputations, makes one soldier deaf (for a restricted interval), and injects {a partially} blinded non-public with gonorrhea to briefly shut down his different eye. Surprisingly, some resist, nevertheless, believing that it’s higher to be lifeless than disabled, a thought course of that sends among the invalided again to struggle, to die with their buddies.
Guilio shortly will get a fan membership, although they don’t know who he’s (his nickname is “Holy Land”). Stefano has his suspicions however, for dramatic functions, he fights them. Issues come to a head when a brand new nurse, Anna (Federica Rosellini), arrives. There’s instantly a connection between her and Guilio, who remembers her as a high-achiever from school. So — in a while — does Stefano, who remembers the sexism of the tutors who refused to present Anna her rightful grades, just because she was a girl. A bodily or religious menage à trois is hinted at, although — possibly it’s an issue with the English subtitles — the specifics of it are, fairly frustratingly, by no means totally defined.
Equally irritating is the construction of the movie, which dispenses with the three-act construction in favor of simply two. Within the second act, the story takes a shocking flip with the introduction of a public well being problem that’s decimating troopers and civilians alike. This seems to be the Spanish Flu, a precursor of Covid and antecedent of Pfeiffer’s Bacillus, each lethal strains of influenza that the authorities refuse to take severely. “We threat dropping the struggle,” an more and more panicked Stefano tells his superior. “For a cough?” comes the reply. Nicely, we all know the place that line of pondering takes us.
It’s an interesting slice of historical past, providing attention-grabbing parallels to immediately and posing good, politically charged questions in regards to the ethics of saving younger males — and they’re at all times younger males — from the informal slaughter of struggle. However after that, regardless of terrific performances from the leads, and particularly Borghi, Battleground merely fizzles out, leaving us with the tantalizing considered the extra thorny, advanced, related movie it might have been.
Title: Battleground (Campo Di Battaglia)
Pageant: Venice (Competitors)
Gross sales Agent: Rai Cinema Worldwide
Director: Gianni Amelio
Screenwriters: Gianni Amelio, Alberto Taraglio
Forged: Alessandro Borghi, Gabriel Montesi, Federica Rosellini, Giovanni Scotti, Vince Vivenzio, Alberto Cracco, Luca Lazzareschi, Maria Grazia Plos, Rita Bosello
Working time: 1 hr 43 minutes
