Glacial and ungripping

badajoz-1

The book is supposed to be a modern classic - the author has heavily researched the First World War, and it has taken ages to get to the screen. I am reading the novel, but this very slow, trying to be worthy, adaptation did not encourage me to finish it, but I did, and found that most of the book has disappeared - yes, literally hundreds of pages have been jettisoned so that we are left only with the love affair and a half hearted look back at the Western Front. It is an utter disgrace and insult to the author, admittedly of a not very good book, but he has made a very careful, serious and literary attempt to try and illustrate four years of hell that somehow a lot of men survived!! This film, I am afraid, is... awful. The glacial slowness of the Amiens portion (pre war, and Englishman comes to study factory methods but spends all his time ogling the owner's wife)is truly dull. You barely care a hoot for two people, Wraysford (Englishman played by Eddie Redmayne) and his French lover (played by Clemence Poesy - we are all supposed to know her from Harry Potter, which I gratefully missed after two episodes), as they exchange only looks. Sorry director, writer, and actors, but you do not pull it off. It seems only Robert Pattinson (somehow) can emote silently successfully. This production does not. The sex scenes were ludicrous - first up (and poorly done in the book), oral barely before they have kissed,(now realise that the unrestrained sex is meant to mirror people's onward rush into war in 1914, sorry) and, of course, up against the tree, while the kissing is strictly 21 st century - no firm hard straightforward smackeroos here! But, of course, because the story is not told sequentially then the love story just becomes Mills and Boon rather than precursor to war, because the love affair stops as the fever diminishes (too literary by half in the book, but an utter failure by writer of screenplay to use the material properly!) Then we get to the so-called trench scenes on the Somme. Apparently we are supposed to think of Helmand - hot, scorched earth and 20 year olds, but this is the Somme 1916 with a citizen army of 18-35 year olds, and yet they made an incredible effort to get the buttons and uniforms absolutely right!!! Why???!!! And as for the shortage of tunnellers - we see five at most who have built huge underground bunker!!! And the Germans who burst in are in full uniform as clean as on a parade ground! Come on, you really are letting the design team down something awful. And, as for the 35 year old reviewers on National Newspapers - they all have to mention mud - this is the Somme chalk! But like Spielberg in 'War Horse', eventually you have to give in to cliché and a good visual rather than play it straight. The heart of the book - the first day of the Somme - just does not work, because there are too few extras. You are supposed to see thousands mown down, and the world changes forever. Um, a bit of rushing about and a few bodies just gets lost, and I am afraid the writer and director obviously were not interested ( it shows dreadfully), and why they should have been allowed to work on the adaptation is beyond me. No wonder Mr Faulks was only allowed to visit for a very short time!

score 3/10

badajoz-1 24 January 2012

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2554474/