11/12/2022 0 Comments Land of mine movie review![]() ![]() They are numerous, and most importantly, expendable nobody will weep if their limbs get blown off defusing mines. To carry out the perilous task, he’s given a group of German POWs. Danish soldier Sergeant Rasmussen (Roland Møller) is tasked with clearing a portion of Denmark’s western coast of 45,000 of the over two million landmines buried by German soldiers during the war. Things To Do app: Get the best in events, dining and travel right on your device ![]() But the battle lines are still drawn, and every ragged breath the film takes braces for an explosion. This isn’t a war movie it’s an after-the-war movie. The opening scene of “Land of Mine” is a masterful manipulation of tension, a tension that doesn’t break when the soldier’s fists start to fly. When a face is paired with the anger, it belongs to a Danish soldier, observing with barely contained fury the disgraced rows of Germans marching out of his country at the end of five years of WWII occupation. The breathing gets louder, heavier – with anger, it turns out. The majority of Denmark's landmines were cleared less than five years ago.The movie starts out starkly, with breath over black-and-white credits. They're underdogs caught on the wrong side of history, with a job doomed to failure. Ernst and Werner (Emil and Oskar Belton) are twins who dream of setting up business together, Sebastian (Louis Hoffman), the only one who dares to speak up to Rasmussen, is an intellectual from a wealthy background, and Helmut (Joel Basman), the oldest, has a grudge against authority in general. We get to know a little about the dynamics of the group and the lives they hope to return to. ![]() At this stage, they're so ravaged by hunger pains that they're in danger of blowing themselves up by vomiting into the mines' mechanisms. His superior officers are much more implacable, accusing him of insubordination for feeding the boys from army stores. Rasmussen is not the only vengeful Danish soldier on show. Yet if it were not wholly true, why would the Royal Danish Army, which co-operated with Zandvliet and his crew, promote a piece of fiction which throws such a harsh light on its past? And there are references to the German engineering units who did much of the mine clearing, but it's hard to find anything about these young soldiers. Go online and you can read about the way the Danes denied food and care to their German refugees, most of them women and children, after the war. The film works as a moving antiwar essay and as a gripping. ![]() But the menacing stretch of white sand where they spend their days and the bleak shed where they're locked away at night are so thoroughly infused with dread and pain that you're inclined to park any reservations you might have about the script's formulaic style until it's done with you.Īnd it's a little known tale. Land of Mine, based on a true but not well-known part of history, rediscovers the past and brings it to life with remarkable assurance. With the recent hit animated film, many may think of Denmark as the land of Lego, but for this new film it’s the LAND OF MINE. It's clear from the beginning, for instance, that Sergeant Rasmussen will eventually undergo a radical change of heart and that a large proportion of the naive young solders under his command will be dead by then. Oh, and this film scored an Oscar nom, though THE SALESMAN took home the statuette last month. It's a harrowing story neatly shaped into melodrama by Danish writer-director Martin Zandvliet. ![]()
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