The Damned 2024 Movie Review
Winter 1862. In the middle of the Civil War, the US Army sends a group of volunteer soldiers to the remote western regions. There, the men are to patrol disputed border regions. When the course of their mission abruptly changes, they increasingly lose sight of the meaning of their assignment.
Although the hermetic plot takes place over a hundred and fifty years in the past, Roberto Minervi’s ( What You Gonna Do When the World’s on Fire? ) subtle historical drama captivates with an allegorical topicality that is not only based on the fact that a violent conflict between deeply divided fronts in the USA no longer seems like just the fictional scenario of an Alex Garland film. The neutral natural setting, the conspicuous absence of a clearly identifiable enemy and the extensive omission of dialogic debates about contemporary ideologies make the subversive production a counter-design to classic war films.
The Italian director and screenwriter converts these conventions most directly by avoiding extensive action and bellicose bombast. The symbolic setting through which the border patrol, recognizable as Union soldiers only by their uniforms, roams in the year of the action, 1862, is a strangely picturesque landscape. The lush grassland and clear rivers are an ideal place to start a family, one of the older soldiers muses to a young newcomer. The latter’s dutiful priority, however, is service to the fatherland.
” I hope it stays that simple for you ,” says his counterpart with melancholy skepticism. The conversations that unfold in the forced silence have a timeless quality, reflected by the universality of the only extended combat action. The ghostly echoing shots come as if from nowhere from enemies who might as well be invisible. This literal fight against nothingness illustrates the cruel absurdity of an undertaking whose meaning increasingly eludes the small volunteer corps. The film’s message seems all the clearer for it.
History repeats itself. In textbooks and on the screen, which Roberto Minervini’s contemplative war drama turns into a spookily timeless battlefield. The conflict fought there seems infinitely far removed from the prototypical characters. It is not only this universality that brings the pacifist parable depressingly close to the here and now. ” We kill other people, other Americans ,” it says in the sophisticated scenario. Its documentary credibility, enhanced by naturalistic acting and improvisational dialogue, seems like an ominous prophecy.
