For A Lost Soldier

Rating:
Summary: Shattered Realities
Review: 'For A Lost Soldier' is one film which I have watched several times! It deals with a volatile topic, the story of a very young boy who finds love in the arms of a young Canadian soldier in World War II. Since the story is based on an autobiographical book, it is not the whimsy of a script writer but rather a glimpse into one man's childhood memories. The director took some liberties with the book, both in the introduction and again at the end, but otherwise stayed fairly true to the story. The movie challenges one's ideas regarding consensual sexual relationships which involve an adult and a minor. If anyone was seduced in the film, it was the soldier. The boy is in control and very aware of what it is that he wants from the soldier at all times. The event happened during the liberation of Holland and the liberation theme is tied closely to the young boy's own special liberation. The film also gives a vastly different view of life in Holland under German occupation. While 'The Hiding Place' portrays the horrors of Nazi power in a large city, this film shows what life was like in a remote village. The boy's ration card, so carefully guarded at home, is not even recognized by his 'adoptive' family. They appear to eat well and the village is only guarded by two German soldiers. The soldiers are so bored, they attend the local church service on Sundays, even though the minister is raining down hellfire and brimstone on the German forces in his sermons. One movie with two new concepts to explore, make the film a basic to any good collection.

Rating:
Summary: Requires an open mind, but surprisingly a fine movie
Review: Because of its extremely risky subject: A friendship that develops into a romance between a 20-30-something Canadian soldier and a 12 year old Dutch boy, “For A Lost Soldier” is no doubt destined to remain in the very obscure, little-seen foreign film file, which is unfortunate. The first half of this film is reminiscent of other great coming-of-age war films like John Boorman’s “Hope and Glory”, but takes a very offbeat twist when the boy, Jeroen, meets Walt, the somewhat melancholy but friendly soldier. While some may be unsettled with the idea of a boy and a man having a romantic relationship, the story really focuses more on the friendship and the rites of passage of a boy growing up. World War II must have been a terrifying experience for many of the children of Europe, especially when you are sent far away from your family and surrounded by people and places you don’t know. Never being graphic, this sometimes haunting film delicately deals with themes of love, loneliness, friendship and abandonment. An enjoyable mix of light-hearted moments and touching, poignant moments as well. Directed with grace and class, there’s a lyrical beauty and lush tone to this film which is subtle and under-stated. The audience is invited into the sleepy Dutch countryside and the simple lives of a peaceful, tolerant people. This movie is much more than an offbeat, foreign “gay love story”. “For a Lost Soldier” is a charming and captivating film that will stick with you long after you’ve seen it. It deserves to be seen.

Rating:
Summary: Appealing only to those who actively seek such media
Review: The ostensibly "tender" portrayal of a 12-year-old boy's (Jeroem) sexual relationship with a Canadian soldier (Walt) in World War II. Apart from barely developing the kid as a believable character, there's hardly any redeeming quality to Walt. The man is openly a predator, using candy and promises of adventure to seduce his way into Jeroem's pants. There's only one real "sex" scene between the two, and the director handles it with as much taste and class as one can handle a grown man deflowing a preteen. In a scene where Jeroem's adoptive father confronts Walt about what he knows is going on, the man wilts under the fact that he owes his freedom partly to the Canadian army's driving Nazis out of their land, and his resolve crumbles. All in all, it's a pretty bland and full of half-hearted narrative excuses. I will give the film one kudo, tho: they didn't fall back on the cliché of abusive father-figure driving the boy into the pedophile's "loving" arms.

Rating:
Summary: On Exploitation
Review: I've thought very hard about this movie after reading these reviews.
I couldn't, and no matter how hard I try, can't distinguish the soldier's behaviour towards the boy from pure self-gratification - an exercise in narcissism, projected from 1st person to 3rd.

The boy's regard for the soldier, I suspect would be entirely familiar to any boy who ever had a crush on an adult.

but Love?

I found it a thought provoking movie, because it used the cinematic conventions of a love story to tell a story about neediness. Sure, neediness is necessary to love, but sufficient? Hardly.

I don't have a problem with a movie portraying sexual exploitation, but felt uneasy that the treatment here skirted perilously close to sanctification and propagandisation. It was certainly not 'portrayal' in any way I could make sense of.

It has an uneasy resonance, for me, with a strong tendency in the community of men who exploit boys: they mistake the undoubted readiness of certain boys to form attachments, and their curiosity about sexual development, for love and/or sexual desire. I believe this impression is largely formed and reinforced by powerful expressions, like this movie. The problem is that such expressions almost certainly represent the wishful thinking of adults, rather than the authentic experience of kids.
Even when the story is autobiographical, as I believe this to be*, it makes sense to me that the dishonesty could represent a sexualised variation on the self-replicating damage we see in schools and military institutions, where each incoming group "grows up" from being exploited and abused to perpetrate the same on the next intake. There's some sort of "empathy bypass" which seems to be inherent to the mechanism.

*From reading the review of the book on which the film is based, the film has definitely been sanitised and perhaps crosses the line into fiction : in the book, the soldier forces sex with the kid, and his general behaviour towards him is even less consistent with love than is depicted in the film. I didn't know this when I wrote the preceding, and I somewhat sickened to reflect that the movie's promos and reviews ever led me to believe this was a film which might uplift me.
The whole thing starts to feel like a triumph of romanticism over honesty, perhaps in the tradition of the "Olympia" films of Leni Riefenstahl, where the beautiful bodies and movement of athletes, and the considerable arsenal of artful cinematography, were conscripted in the glorious service of something horrible about to engulf Europe.

I don't require my movies to condemn. In fact, I prefer them not to make moral judgements of any sort. It disturbs me, however, when they use misleading packaging to inveigle me into taking an interest, and then once I'm inside, use an essentially dishonest "insemination by imagery" process to surreptitiously advance a moral judgement - in favour - of the frankly indefensible.

I defend your right to see this movie and make your own judgement, but I'm glad I can exercise my right to warn you about it.

Rating:
Summary: Touching and Bittersweet
Review: Perhaps a bit taboo for most US audiences, I found this movie to be touching and bittersweet.

Based on the autobiography by Rudi Van Dantzig, "For A Lost Soldier" takes place during the end of WW II in the Netherlands. It's the story of a young boy in Amsterdam whose parents send him to live in the country (Friesland) for his own safety. A family who had initially asked for a young girl ends up being young Jeroen's "adoptive" family. Jeroen is coming of age, being the tender age of 12, and is making discoveries on his own, especially his sexuality. He doesn't necessarily understand his feelings at first, until the arrival of the Canadian Liberators in 1945.

One particular soldier, Walt Cook, takes an interest in young Jeroen and a friendship blossoms between the two. Heit, Jeroen's adoptive father, sees that there is more to their friendship than meets the eye, and lets him know that he sees what's going on. This doesn't bother the other soldiers, however. In fact, as other soldiers are courting young girls in the village, so does Walt "court" young Jeroen. The two fall in love with each other, and a sexual relationship does indeed develop.

Perhaps it's Walt not wanting to face the hurt Jeroen will eventually face, but he fails to tell Jeroen that his platoon will be leaving. Jeroen is crushed when he realizes that Walt is gone the next day, and tries in vain as he searches the village for him. A heart-breaking scene.

But Jeroen's mother returns for her son, and the first thing he tells her is "I think you should know I am going to America!"

The film has some beautiful cinematography. Maarten Smit was excellent as Jeroen, as was Andrew Kelley (who is a dancer in the Royal Dutch Ballet) who played Walt. Rudi Van Dantzig, himself, has choreographed for the Royal Dutch Ballet, and it's obvious he had a hand in choosing just the right person to play the "Lost Soldier".

This kind of film couldn't have been made anywhere else due to the age of young Jeroen. Overall, an excellent film. Haunting, brutally honest, and bittersweet.

Rating:
Summary: I'm Conflicted
Review: Oh, my. What to say about this movie? It is, after all, about a young man having sex with a 12-year-old boy.

First, the easy part . . . . The movie is well-crafted, structured around flashback, a deft mix of subtitled Dutch and English in reflection of the idiosyncratic communication that evolves between the main characters, and beautifully filmed in the soft light of northern Europe. As a piece of cinematic craftmanship, I'd give it 4 stars.

But then there's the story itself. Can sexual relations between an adult and a child ever be excused by love or circumstances? Before this movie, the answer for me was a resounding no. After this movie, I simply don't know. The man here is not a sexual predator in that he is not attracted to the boy by virtue of his youth. Instead, he is a gay man doubly isolated by his sexual orientation and by being on foreign ground at the end of a world-shattering war. And, coming across a gay boy likewise isolated from his home at the end of the same war, a bond is forged that did not have sex as its initial aim and came to include sex only after love was so deeply established as to have rendered age irrelevant.

Or did it? After all, the soldier is first attracted to the boy by his looks, not by anything he knew about the boy or his circumstances. And can age ever be irrelevant to sex involving minors? Do 12-year-olds ever know enough of themselves, their world, and its risks to be informed participants?

If nothing else, this movie accomplishes something by making the question tenable. But does it, in the end, make this love affair all right? I simply don't know.

This movie stands up as a thought-provoking film. It should not, however, be read as an unambiguous justification for adult/child sex. Since it, however, implies more than presents the ambiguities and could leave some thinking they've just watched an argument that child sex taboos are nothing more than unwarranted modern western uptightness, I discount it to 3 stars.

Rating:
Summary: Nice but overrated
Review: There's nothing wrong with this movie in terms of cinematics, acting, directing, and quality of writing. It is sincere, character-driven and real. A caveat: To appreciate it at all you have to put aside the conviction that a relationship between a man and a boy is always wrong.

Those things said, there is nothing particularly excellent about this movie. It is touching, nostalgic, and truthful, but it is none of these things to the point of truly affecting your heart. Part of the reason is that it's too short, another part is that the ambiance (editing/music/so forth) are not very well done, and another part may be simply that I had read so many extremely complimentary reviews that my expectations were just too high.

It's a nice movie... but don't expect a masterpiece.

Rating:
Summary: Very Touching.
Review: I have never written a film review before, but couldn't stop myself this time. 'For a lost Soldier' takes you back to your memories and makes you nostalgic about your childhood. I am a 24yr old lad but still it brought back all those childhood memories.....What should be really appriciated is good acting and never being graphic this film projects a relationship between a boy and a man in a true romantic sense. I am surely impressed and will keep the video all my life. Its worth the ££..If you are looking for true offbeat gay love story...its worth watching.

Rating:
Summary: VERY TOUCHING STORY !!
Review: At the beginning of the story the boy (main character) seems to be very quiet, until he met the soldier from Canada, Walt, then he started to be more happy and during the time that both of them were together, they both have a great time, until the last the soldier left, and that part was really touching, because the boy is finding the soldier's picture that he took and also the necklace that the soldier left on a thing (a fake person that stand on a farm that is made of dry grass), but that time was thundering, so he hurts himself by toucking the necklace. Looking at those parts I was really touched because the boy seems like losing his most important person in the world...
But I love the part that shows the time when the both of them were together, so sweet and romantic.

Rating:
Summary: Outstanding Film! Very heartwarming.
Review: I have to admit, that when the movie started, I was a little worried about how good it would be. I'm not a foreign-film-with-subtitles fan, but it was truly well done. I do think there were times where something was lost in the translation. But overall, a wonderful movie. The sadness of their short relationship is overshadowed by the fact that such a relationship was allowed to happen at all. If only all of society was so open minded....