The Trench

Rating:
Summary: A Great Disappointment
Review: The first day of the Battle of the Somme in 1916 - the bloodiest day in British military history - deserves a detailed portrayal on film. Unfortunately, The Trench is not that film. The Trench is a standard "small group" portrayal of a British infantry platoon in the forward trenches during the three days leading up to the British attack. As films in the war genre go, this film is not very original and even hackneyed at times. Indeed, the film's ending is reminiscent of Gallipoli with Mel Gibson, although not as well done. The film also has basic problems with character development, plot evolution and historical background. Overall, this film is passable if you have a great interest in the First World War (but you will likely be let down) but quite boring and even incomprehensible if you do not.

Unfortunately, the director of The Trench did not feel that character development is particularly important and the viewer is presented with a bunch of stock characters that never gain much definition. The main characters (by type) are: the young, rookie private; the older, experienced sergeant; the weak lieutenant; the disgruntled soldier; the jerk; and the fat, optimistic soldier. The viewer learns precious little about these characters, other than that they generally interact poorly with each other. Indeed, there is very little indication of friendship, cooperation or comradeship that make a real military unit work. It would have been nice to get some background on where these troops come from and how much combat experience they had, but the director almost presents them as ciphers. One of the more interesting aspects of the Battle of the Somme was the character of the British "Pals" battalions, formed from tight social groups like rugby teams or clerks back in England. A "Pals" battalion would have been much more interesting than this near-dysfunctional team.

The plot is also a major problem with The Trench because there is so little of it. Most of the film focuses on the 72 hours prior to the attack and is thus anticipatory in nature. While there is one small night raid into No Mans Land, a brief artillery bombardment and a sniper attack, much of the film is quite slow. Indeed, the director wastes an incredible amount of time on two ridiculous but inter-related subjects: a stolen pornographic postcard and the young private mooning over an Irish waitress whom he met briefly before shipping out. Clearly, the director has no idea how to sequence a dramatic film and he appears to stuff anything handy - however absurd - into the cracks. Furthermore, the director is unable to bring out the kind of tension that exists prior to a big attack - which Gallipoli did so well.

Even the "big" attack at the end is a major disappointment. A&E's "Lost Battalion" last year had for more convincing scenes of trench warfare than "The Trench's" limp attack at the end. We see perhaps 50-60 troops marching across a green meadow that lacks a single shell crater, uphill (!), against a German line that seems to consist of a single row of barbed wire. Apparently, there wasn't much budget for extras, location or special effects. Given that this was the largest single attack ever launched by the British Army, this film's depiction of it appears to minimize a great and tragic event. Instead of seeing rows of British troops mowed down (and like Spielberg's Private Ryan, this film should have made some effort to show what the attack looked like from the German side), we see individuals go down.

Rating:
Summary: A Great Disappointment
Review: The first day of the Battle of the Somme in 1916 - the bloodiest day in British military history - deserves a detailed portrayal on film. Unfortunately, The Trench is not that film. The Trench is a standard "small group" portrayal of a British infantry platoon in the forward trenches during the three days leading up to the British attack. As films in the war genre go, this film is not very original and even hackneyed at times. Indeed, the film's ending is reminiscent of Gallipoli with Mel Gibson, although not as well done. The film also has basic problems with character development, plot evolution and historical background. Overall, this film is passable if you have a great interest in the First World War (but you will likely be let down) but quite boring and even incomprehensible if you do not.

Unfortunately, the director of The Trench did not feel that character development is particularly important and the viewer is presented with a bunch of stock characters that never gain much definition. The main characters (by type) are: the young, rookie private; the older, experienced sergeant; the weak lieutenant; the disgruntled soldier; the jerk; and the fat, optimistic soldier. The viewer learns precious little about these characters, other than that they generally interact poorly with each other. Indeed, there is very little indication of friendship, cooperation or comradeship that make a real military unit work. It would have been nice to get some background on where these troops come from and how much combat experience they had, but the director almost presents them as ciphers. One of the more interesting aspects of the Battle of the Somme was the character of the British "Pals" battalions, formed from tight social groups like rugby teams or clerks back in England. A "Pals" battalion would have been much more interesting than this near-dysfunctional team.

The plot is also a major problem with The Trench because there is so little of it. Most of the film focuses on the 72 hours prior to the attack and is thus anticipatory in nature. While there is one small night raid into No Mans Land, a brief artillery bombardment and a sniper attack, much of the film is quite slow. Indeed, the director wastes an incredible amount of time on two ridiculous but inter-related subjects: a stolen pornographic postcard and the young private mooning over an Irish waitress whom he met briefly before shipping out. Clearly, the director has no idea how to sequence a dramatic film and he appears to stuff anything handy - however absurd - into the cracks. Furthermore, the director is unable to bring out the kind of tension that exists prior to a big attack - which Gallipoli did so well.

Even the "big" attack at the end is a major disappointment. A&E's "Lost Battalion" last year had for more convincing scenes of trench warfare than "The Trench's" limp attack at the end. We see perhaps 50-60 troops marching across a green meadow that lacks a single shell crater, uphill (!), against a German line that seems to consist of a single row of barbed wire. Apparently, there wasn't much budget for extras, location or special effects. Given that this was the largest single attack ever launched by the British Army, this film's depiction of it appears to minimize a great and tragic event. Instead of seeing rows of British troops mowed down (and like Spielberg's Private Ryan, this film should have made some effort to show what the attack looked like from the German side), we see individuals go down.

Rating:
Summary: The Trench
Review: This is an excellent movie for World War I buffs. Why? For one reason, there is little enough out there for the amateur historian of this period, and the depictions and language exchange are useful to understand trench warfare. This is not about character development to the ultimate degree. This is about a snapshot of history, and it is well done, for what it set out to achieve. And the price is right. Buy it, now.

Several things are lacking, like the dry trenches (never happen) and the clean uniforms (Britain had been in the war for two years), but perfection would make it five stars, rather than four.

Jim Minnoch

Rating:
Summary: The Trench
Review: This is an excellent movie for World War I buffs. Why? For one reason, there is little enough out there for the amateur historian of this period, and the depictions and language exchange are useful to understand trench warfare. This is not about character development to the ultimate degree. This is about a snapshot of history, and it is well done, for what it set out to achieve. And the price is right. Buy it, now.

Several things are lacking, like the dry trenches (never happen) and the clean uniforms (Britain had been in the war for two years), but perfection would make it five stars, rather than four.

Jim Minnoch

Rating:
Summary: Slice of life; doom without much homomasculine drama
Review: This movie seemed like a filmed stage play from an off-Broadway experimental theater in the 1960s. This does not mean it is a bad drama, but that its classical unities of time, place, and action are theatrical rather than filmic. The characters are the same stock characters always found in war movies from "All Quiet on the Western Front" to "Platoon." In fact, one of its sniper scenes is straight out of the last scene in "All Quiet."

This does not mean it is bad so much as it means that without explosive action the military genre becomes a talkfest--in this case between teenagers who don't know each other and therefore have not much to say. In the 60s, plays like this cozied up to homosexuality, which "Trench" fails to do, even though the film stars gay icon Daniel Craig who is the calling card in the cast.

[...]

Anyway, this mise en scene happens years after Walt Whitman and his revealing Calamus soldier poems, and a few years after "Mrs. Dalloway" and "Gods and Monsters" did "takes" on gay men fighting WWI.

Also we are now in, hello, the 21st century when the love that dare not speak its name fairly shouts and it's time to present the unspoken past of WWI and its buried soldier-lovers. Such a tactic would, at least, have given the plotless plot some edge. If same-period "Maurice" could show same-sex lovers, then why not uncloset these lives in the trenches? These homomasculine buddy-buddy war stories of chums who enlist together, train together, fight together, die together are coming even out of Iraq.

As presented, the film channels all of its anxieties about love and death and comradeship into huge amounts of smoking where inhaling means one thing and exhaling means another and lighting a match means everything. If this had been a non-smoking "Trench," there would have been no stage business at all.

The whole film is lensed in a virtual general shot. Too bad. Some close-ups would have helped, particularly of Daniel Craig, whose eyes deserve two Academy Awards.

All in all, if you like theater, you may enjoy the one-dimensial "Trench," but accept it for what it is. Don't fault it because it is not a high-budget action film. For fun, do a double feature of "Trench" with "Lafayette Escadrille" which is also a little known WWI film full of very handsome, very blond men.