Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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47 of 47 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
You'll never see a better war film, 11 Nov 2008
I'm bemused by the tendency to assert that this film is a veiled Vietnam film, "ostensibly" about another war, as this Amazon review puts it. It IS about another war, one that was far more important to the nation where it was written and filmed, and in which the father of writer and director Charles Chilton was killed. Anyway, I watched it as a First World War film, and that is how it has always seemed to me: it comments on all other wars, implicitly, of course.
It's silly to compare or measure this against most other war films, because it is so unlike any other, but it stands out as a dramatic, cinematic, narrative gem. A serious musical about the horrors of war: sounds as likely as a serious musical about living in Nazi Germany. Oh, wait...someone did that too. Cabaret must owe quite a bit to this film, not least in the "tomorrow belongs to me" scene, although they wrote their songs from scratch for Cabaret.
The songs here are real, some the official versions from popular music hall, and some the unofficial versions sung by the troops, with considerably darker lyrics (though they omitted the rudest of the unofficial lyrics). The humour is black and dry as a tomb, and you don't quite know whether to laugh or wince in a lot of places (just do both). But the real beauty of the film is in the settings, which are sparse, only partly realistic, and sometimes subject to extraordinary changes. The most impressive are slow 360 degree pans, during which everything changes behind the camera's back, so that when you get back the character you started with, they are in a completely different situation. These and other rapid scene shifts are part of whole film's unreal, nightmarish quality that matches the subject matter perfectly.
If you haven't seen it, make sure you do. If you saw it long ago and dimly remember it and wonder if it was as good as you remember (or maybe better than you thought), I'd say yes, and you should refresh your acquaintance. This seems an almost absurdly cheap price for it.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
'Heavy-handed pretentiousness', 18 May 2009
Many of you who have not seen this film may be aware of its ending shot of the white crosses of a WW1 graveyard on the South Downs. The scene is not only moving & powerful but cinematically unique, with apparently 16,000 graves appearing in the final shot - a poignant testament to a devastating war.
Sadly, the rest of the film does not live up to this and is instead filled with a sloppy mix of surrealism, songs & dialogue from the original play.
The surreal/ dadaist overtones make the film weak by ceaselessly attempting to fudge the idea of a seaside fairground with the war (which doesn't work). The wackiness also gets in the way of the plot, favouring 'pretentious' scenes such as a merry-go-round of real cavalry rather than scenes which move the plot along or contribute a worthwhile point.
Songs, fortunately, are a comprehensive & faithful selection, being as they are all from the time-period. However, all too often, these songs swamp out the dialogue or meaning of a scene so that the film just becomes like watching a DVD of 'Adam Ant' videos (interesting, but not connected together by a storyline).
Lastly, there is the dialogue. The play (which I have participated in a version of) is held together fairly loosely by a set of newspaper boys/ announcers who keep the audience in tune with the plot, whilst allowing scenes with an interesting twist on events (rather like Monty Python).
However, this film dispenses with both this and much of the dialogue & structure, meaning that the film becomes a confusing mess. As I can recall, only the beginning 'States of Europe' & the 'Pacifist' scene held together & all the others were lost in the mire of poor plotting.
So, I hate to say it, but the only things worth getting out of this film are the ending scene & the soundtrack. Besides that, I'm afraid the rest of the film is a jumbled-up mish-mash of ideas with little coherence.
The good news is that Attenborough did better both before & after (e.g. Brighton Rock & Gandhi), and there are many other, finer war-comedies (e.g. Dr Strangelove).
Unfortunately there are few other enduring films about WW1. However, if you want to see this one done well, I suggest going to see a stage performance of it or buying the book. It may be costly, but there are reasons OWALW is still popular...
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Perhaps Richard Attenborough's Finest Film, 6 Feb 2009
It is particularly difficult to categorise this film. Yes, it's a film about war, the pity of war, the pity war distils, but it manages to avoid the vainglory and the heroic thrill that almost always categorises war movies. Even the impulse to anger at the waste of war, and the stupidity of humankind is effectively suppressed in the representation of pity that is poetically evolved here. The film doesn't even fit well into the `musicals' category, as it uses music, in the form of songs popular during WWI as tokens of the irrepressibility of the human spirit, rather than for their musical essence. Many showings on TV are edited for length, reducing its impact, but this is the real deal. It even passes muster in its history of the complex inevitability of the war and of its mindless waste of life. And it does this using a densely glowing aurora of famous acting stars: Redgrave, Gielgud, Richardson, Olivier, Hawkins, More. It's funny and it's heartbreakingly sad at the same time, and it's beautifully photographed, with a final scene that brings tears to many eyes. This film is to movies what Wilfred Owen is to Poetry. It speaks for itself.
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