Tonight's movie was a thoroughly brilliant film out of Denmark (of all places), called "Land Of Mine" (2015). I say (of all places) regarding Denmark, not because you wouldn't expect a brilliant film from that country but more because you never hear of a Danish Film Industry, in the way you hear about cinema from other European countries like Germany, France, Italy, England, Spain, Sweden or Poland. But I guess the Danes make films too, and if "Land Of Mine" is any indication, they have some very talented filmmakers there.
I discovered the movie in the usual way of late; through a web-related recommendation. This time it popped up on IMDB while I was researching "Generation War". Yep, "Land Of Mine" is yet another World War Two movie, and in watching it this evening I completed a four night marathon of WW2 action. Both "Generation War" and "Land Of Mine" are stories with a German perspective. Having already discussed the former, I will now briefly review the latter. "Land Of Mine" tells the story of a troupe of captured German soldiers in Denmark. We are shown quite clearly that the captured soldiers are just boys, most not older than 15. It is known that at the end of the war, when things became desperate for Hitler and his gang, that boys as young as 12 were "recruited" (i.e. forced to fight), and so were old men. Germany had invaded and captured Denmark right off the bat at the beginning of the war, and had occupied that country for the duration, no doubt with their customary Iron Fist.
So it is no wonder, then, at war's end when a reversal of fortune takes place and the Danes have their country back, that the Danish military is furious at the Germans, no matter if they are just young boys who have been captured on Danish soil.
This particular troupe of boys is pulled out of a forced march by a belligerent Danish sergeant, who has selected them for a very dangerous post-war project that he is in charge of : clearing the coast of German land mines, 2.2 million of which were planted by the Nazis against an assumed Allied invasion that happened in Normandy (France) instead. So all of these millions of land mines laid buried on the coastline, and the Danish authorities - not nice guys as you might assume - used captured German troops to clear the minefields. The thing was, though, that the captured troops, by that point in the war, were all teenaged boys of about 15 or 16.
They were just kids, brainwashed and forced into the war in a desperation move at the end, and they wound up in the hands of brutal and vengeful Danish officers who used these boy soldiers to dig up and deactivate thousands of mines along the beaches.
This is basically what the movie shows, from start to finish. The German boys are given some anti-mine training and taught how to de-fuse the mines. Then they are decamped to a farm near a beach, where they live with their ultra-macho and angry Danish overseer, a sergeant who breaks them into submission.
But something happens along the way. The Danish sergeant, brutal as he is, slowly comes to see how hard the boys are trying to do their terrifying job, of digging up landmines. They are concentrating hard, even though starving because there is no food, just to get the mines cleared from the beach so that they can finally go home to Germany, as promised by the sergeant. He sees their determination to finish the job, and to obey him in all his cruelty, and slowly he becomes humanised to the boys. Slowly he develops a small degree of compassion for them, especially after witnessing a boy getting blown to bits after accidentally tripping a landmine.
The Danish actor who played the sergeant was just fantastic. He was so good that I immediately looked him up on IMDB after the movie was over. His name is Roland Moller, and as it turns out, he is not even a trained actor, but was a criminal for much of his prior life, who spent 4 1/2 years in prison for assaults, as an enforcer for organised crime in Denmark.
The world is a weird place, and there are many unusual stories. Ordinarily, I would not be quick to rave about such a character, but his performance was Oscar quality, and I was literally thinking, "wow, this guy must be one of the great Danish actors".
But he was part of the Danish criminal underground until about ten years ago, beating other criminals to a pulp. And now he is turning in Oscar caliber performances. Go figure.
Europeans, God Bless 'Em, are some truly weird people. That is meant with no disrespect whatsoever, but I make that comment because, here in America were are taught all about European culture through the ages, and also the militarism, but it is the high artistic culture that has formed our American impression of historical Europe. The architecture, the paintings, the music, the cuisine, the inventions, Age Of Reason.
But what makes the Europeans weird is the brutality. I mean, Good Lordy Moses - it is unequaled in human history, though the Asians come close (including Russia).
The brutality, and the fighting between different ethnic tribes.
I had a genius teacher in high school named Mr. Sprigg. He would be long gone by now, but Mr. Sprigg taught us about the early "tribes of Europe", like the Goths and Ostrogoths, and the Celts and Angles and Saxons. He taught us about the continuous migrations of these tribes, so that they wound up in areas that had been previously occupied by others. Mr. Sprigg used to say "there are no Germans in Germany", that - tribally speaking - it was all Austro-Hungarian now (Ostrogoth) and that all the actual German tribespeople had ended up in the British Isles.
I will not go into depth because of Sunday Night Exhaustion, but I remember Mr. Sprigg's teachings about the tribal origins of Europe, and I think that the disparity of the tribes explains some of the ongoing trouble over the centuries.
Really though, it is because of the cold.
Cold weather begat invention in the minds of human beings.
"Hey! We are freezing up here in Denmark. It's a freakin' icebox! We have gotta become Vikings and sail the seas and find someplace warmer, or at least tell the English, Germans and Italians to invent science so we can have some inventions. It's too damn cold here".
That was basically the deal, whereas in the warmer climes of America, South America and Africa, the natives already had basic food and shelter, and they weren't freezing to death, so they just carried on with business as usual. There was no need to sail away, to find and conquer a place that wasn't cold, because they already had it. So they did not need to develop the inventive mind because they were already comparatively comfortable. "Necessity is the Mother Of Invention", and the Europeans had necessity. And in the beginning, they were savages too. We forget that about them.
I love European history and culture, but I feel that it must be said that a ton of the world's history of violence also came out of Europe. This is not to be placed on the shoulders of the current generation of Europeans, or Americans who have their own history and whose country descended from Europe.
It is rather to step back, perhaps for me right now because of these movies I have recently seen, and because of books I have recently read, and to say that we have got to keep in mind the entire history of Europe, so that we know from where these tribal differences began, which resulted in so much conflict for so many centuries.
And with that, and with tonight's movie "Land Of Mine", I will end my current emphasis on World War Two and all related subject matter. Sorry to harp on it, but the films themselves would have encouraged an impulse in anyone to examine the subject, I think.
So there you have it.
See you in the morn. :):)
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