Behind the Lines (1998)

This extraordinary World War I film concerns themes of heroism, sacrifice, duty, and self-knowledge as profound as any in Saving Private Ryan. The story, taken from Pat Barker's 1991 novel Regeneration and based on true events, is set in a British Army hospital in Craiglockart, Scotland, in 1917. There, a pioneering psychiatrist named Dr. William Rivers (Jonathan Pryce) works with shell-shocked soldiers in a gentle, humane manner that contrasts sharply with the brutality of his colleagues. (The film's most horrifying scene features a mute patient being forced to speak by means of electric shock.)

Among Rivers's patients is a mute, amnesiac officer named Billy Prior (Jonny Lee Miller), as well as the emotionally depleted poet Wilfred Owen (Stuart Bunce) and another poet and war hero, Siegfried Sassoon (James Wilby). Unlike the others, Sassoon is not, in fact, suffering from any disorder but is being quietly punished for writing a pamphlet denouncing the war. The army hopes Rivers can find some basis for mental incompetency in Sassoon, but the thoughtful doctor instead attempts to persuade him to add legitimacy to his criticisms of the war by returning to active duty.

Pryce brilliantly captures the cumulative effects of Rivers's responsibility--of fixing men and sending them back to their possible deaths--on the good doctor's nerves. Wilby is also fine as Sassoon, but the film belongs just as much to actors Miller and Bunce, whose characters are different kinds of men struggling to find their balance, one through a revived sense of duty and the other through his writing. Scottish filmmaker Gillies Mackinnon (The Playboys) is at the top of his form, telling a unique story about the invisible wounds of war while shedding light on the meeting of two visionary poets and one visionary physician. --Tom Keogh Amazon.com

Mutilated film

In 1998 I saw a great war film that was lost in the glare of the nearly simultaneous American film releases of Terrence Malick's remake of The Thin Red Line- which is a great film, and Steven Spielberg's cliché and stereotype-dripping Saving Private Ryan. It was a 1997 Canadian and British film called Regeneration, directed by Gillies MacKinnon (who directed The Playboys, and Small Faces), based upon the famed book of the same title by British novelist Pat Barker. The screenplay was written by Allan Scott. There were a couple of differences between it and the other films; the first being that it was set during World War One, in 1917, while the other two took place during World War Two. The second was that Regeneration may have been the best film of the trio. In the years since, I have searched for the film on DVD, but it only was available in a Region 2 DVD format. Then, I recently found it online, released by Artisan DVD, for American audiences. The DVD is as bare bones as one can get- not a single bonus feature. But, even worse is the fact that it was released under a different, and far less compelling and more trite, title of Behind The Lines. Worse yet is the fact that this film is a bowdlerized, dumbed down version of the great film I remember seeing.
While I cannot pinpoint all the changes from the original film, the overall effect on me was not as great. Oh, it's still a good- even arguably a very good film, but the greatness has been lost due to the cutting out of some scenes entirely and the trimming of others- to get the nearly two hour original film down to 95 minutes, and re-editing the film into shorter scenes that are interspersed with each other, designed to appeal to a more MTV and video game mindset. Lost in the rush to appeal to typical American idiocy was most of a small romantic subplot, and extended scenes between two of the main characters, the War Poets Siegfried Sassoon (James Wilby) and Wilfred Owen (Stuart Bunce). One has to guess that if the film had too much poetry in it that the McDonald's fed masses would be turned off. Yet, the worst cut, for me, comes about two thirds into the film, where Dr. Rivers (Jonathan Pryce), head of the asylum- Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh, Scotland, where shell-shocked soldiers go for psychotherapy, goes to London, on R&R, to visit a colleague, Dr. Yealland (John Neville), who is using a very effective form of electroshock therapy to get soldiers suffering from mutism to speak again. All these years later it was that scene, above all others, which stood out in my memory. As a mute soldier is strapped down and about to be shocked for the first time, the camera cuts away from the soldier, and as his agonal screams ripple outward, one only sees the slightly winced reaction of the doctor. It's a brilliant cut and displays the director's command of his craft, for it's a) always better to imagine such horrors, and b) the doctor is the more important character. However, in the Americanized DVD version, all that is lost. We see a standard, even generic, editing job of pain, the doctor wincing, pain, the doctor hanging his head, etc. Thanks, my native land!
The film still has, however bowdlerized, more contemporary relevance than the other two films which drowned it out in 1998, if only because- given the current U.S. treatment of both its Prisoners Of War and veterans of the Iraq War, it shows how little supposedly `civilized nations' have come in almost a century of warfare. It also touches on smaller aspects of the war, like mail censorship, which are never shown in war films, much less even discussed in many for a regarding warfare. While The film lacks the high tech graphics of its bigger budgeted cousins from 1998, the words of some of the poems, and the reactions of the soldiers say far more than mere `shocking' images can, for words that are well chose can never inure their readers. Images, even great ones, can do just that through sheer repetition. That said, the best images in the film are not elaborate war scenes, but those designed to show the aftereffects of war on the human body and mind. As example, there is a young soldier who is a quivering wreck, wont to running naked through the woods and mutilating himself, because, we learn, he was thrown by a shell explosion, into the air and when he regained consciousness he was lying face down in the rotted corpse of a German soldier. Hearing what caused him to become so disturbed is more effective than showing his face inside a bloodied, rotting mass of flesh, for, as in the cut scene of Dr. Rivers turning away from the sight of electroshock therapy, what is imagined is always worse than what can be portrayed, for each individual will fill in the horror with their own fears, rather than having a fixed image in their minds.
The cinematography, by Glen MacPherson, is stunningly realistic yet beautiful- especially in the sepia-tinged, color leeched war sequences, but throughout the whole film, as well; and it works well with the simple and understated musical score. It is a stark reminder that, then and now, one need not have all the high tech big budget special effects wizardry of a Steven Spielberg film to leave far more haunting images- perhaps the most effective one left in this bowdlerized film is the opening of a pair of human eyes buried in mud, so that the whites burn with startling intensity up at the viewer. If only the American distributors had not so badly butchered this film, from the title on, the rest of the film would have retained the intensity of those eyes which held me through nearly a decade.
September 16, 2008

War is ... Complicated

When Siegfried Sassoon threw away his medals and wrote against Great Britain's further participation in WWI, the British government responded by throwing him in a mental asylum for shell shocked soldiers. After all, a "gentleman" would have to be mad to oppose the "good" war.

It didn't change Sassoon's mind; however, during his stay in the asylum, he met and encouraged another WWI poet, Wildred Owen, to write some of the most damning and movie poetry of the war. Both Sassoon and Owen went back to the front. Sassoon survived, but Owen died just a few days before the Armistice.

This is a very well acted film about a little known event, especially in the U.S. The only complaint I have is that I could not purchase this DVD in widescreen, only letterbox. March 21, 2008

Behind The Lines

A rivetting drama based on real life events in WW1 and the psychological disasters occurring from service in the action on the western Front - well before the term 'Post-traumatic Stress Disorder" came into vogue. Full of drama, dilemmas and human emotion. Tightly edited and beautifully photographed. Well worth viewing, indeed repeat viewing. October 3, 2007

A good film that should have been a great one

Despite promising material - the relationship between World War One poets Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon and the pioneering work of psychiatrist Dr W.H.R. Rivers in dealing with shell-shocked soldiers at Craiglockhart Hospital in Scotland - and Pat Barker's fine source novel, Regeneration (given a brief theatrical release in the US as Behind the Lines) is something of a disappointment. It's not so much that it's bad, though it does have many problems, more that it's not great when it could and should have been.

Gillies MacKinnon's direction is a big part of the problem, a victim of too much good taste and restraint and not terribly cinematic either, rarely venturing much beyond medium shots. The material needs attack and passion, but instead it feels like a well-staged piece that's too nervous about offending its potential audience's sensibilities to really go for the throat. The casting is problematic too: Jonathan Pryce is fine as the psychiatrist gradually assuming his patients maladies himself as he faces the irony of curing men so they can be sent back to possibly die at the front but Jonny Lee Miller remains unconvincing as the resentful working class officer Billy Prior, cutting far too contemporary a figure to convince in a period piece. However, the scenes between James Wilby and Stuart Bunce as Sassoon and Owen really take hold, and it's here that the film all too rarely finds its heart and soul. It's a film that stands up a lot better on a second viewing partially because of lower expectations, but it's much too polite to do its subject matter full justice. September 12, 2007

Good adaptation of Barker's Regeneration

I think Pat Barker's World War I trilogy is one of the finest literary works of this century. Thus it was a treat to see a film adaptation of the first of the three novels, Regeneration, in this DVD, "Behind the Lines". There were many solid strenghts to this film.

First, the cinematography and art direction was exceptional. The confined atmosphere of a Scottish mental hospital contrasted against the muddy horror of the front lines and trenches of World War I was exceptional. Scottland in quiet snow is contrasted with France in bloody mud.

Second, the acting is great. Jonathan Pryce did an excellent job of playing a humane psychiatrist that gradually assumes the psychosomatic symptoms of his patients. James Wilby and Jonny Lee Miller pay the other lead roles to perfection. However a surprize performer and performance was the great job Stuart Bunce did portraying poet Wilfred Owen.

Third, the script honored the complexity of Barker's novel. Dr. Rivers must treat shell shocked men so they can return to an insane war. The ethical and psychological issues abound from this situation. Sasoon, played by Wilby, is a hero who responds to the rising insanity of the war. He is a rational man of great courage and compassion. The fact that he is a hero makes his criticisms of the English military leadership even more biting. The contrast of the humane and gentle treatment provided by Rivers with that of one of his colleagues is amazing. A young man is repeatedly shocked with electricity around the tongue and mouth until his mute symptoms are suppressed. A very frightening demonstration of behavior modification at its worst.

My only wish would be that the second novel, "Eye in the Door" and the third novel "Ghost Road" had also been made into films. January 8, 2006

More reviews at Amazon.com ...