Land of mine movie review
Through the camera of Camila Hjelm Knudsen, we see things we are used to seeing in film in new ways.
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The film contains a sort of ruined beauty, as well. That Rasmussen can see the boys as such and that they can reciprocate is a powerful anti-war message, yet one never forced on the audience. The Nazis, who, we are reminded in inference, did not comprise the German armed forces, could not see almost anyone as human. He does it because two bricklayers talk of rebuilding their devastated country, because the former German officer is so determined to get food for his men that they become poisoned with rat droppings, and because his own cruelty causes a young man to die when an hour’s difference may have had him live. It ends badly, as might be expected, but of course Rasmussen does not do it as an officer but as a man. When he decides to indulge in a game of football with them, even my limited military knowledge suggests it might not be the most prudent decision a commanding officer could make. Even as Rasmussen begins to see the soldiers as mere boys, he still must send them out to risk life and limb. The story is not simple or straightforward.
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Goethe was the height of humanity’s evil, while Rasmussen is the best representation of its pain. It was hard for me not to draw parallels between Roland Moller’s Sergeant and Ralph Fiennes’s monstrous Amon Goethe from Schindler’s List. The difference between the Sergeant and Ebbe is that the former is angry about a specific war and the latter is cruel deep down to his soul. Sebastian (Louis Hofmann) invents a device to make the work go easier, and gradually brings humanity out in the Sergeant. The oldest among them, Helmut (Joel Basman) and the only officer, does not believe the Sergeant when he tells them they can go home in three months if only they clear six mines an hour. Martin Zandvliet’s film offers these two stark contrasts between men of power, but is mostly more subtle. That is one of the greatest reasons to watch this film: stories that we think we know which have other sides we almost certainly do not. I noted that we never find out why the German soldier had a Danish flag, and being who I am my mind invented a story to go with it. When one young man is horribly wounded, he is slow to react at all. He plays psychological games with their minds. He seems to relish the idea that the soldiers will get killed. He beats a German soldier carrying a Danish flag. Sergeant Carl Leopold Rasmussen, the man to whom Ebbe sneers, begins the story that way. His is a mind of vengeance, and if there had been no war he would still be a beast.
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He cares less about the mines than about inflicting terror. He gleefully denies them food not some food, any food, entirely aware they are less effective at clearing mines on empty stomachs. He makes no appearance of caring about the atrocities afflicted on Jews or anyone else, and if he knew for absolute certain that the boys he’s sending to get blown up were not monsters he would not care. He is referring to young boys who, because they were German soldiers, are being forced to clear landmines from Danish beaches.
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He is played by Mikkel Boe Folsgaard, and the fact that the Germans wanted to take over the world doesn’t make him less of a villain. “Better them than us,” sneers Ebbe, an allied military officer with a hatefully punchable smirk.