Plot
The lives of a troubled veteran, his nurse girlfriend and a naive boy intersect first in Alberta and then in Belgium during the bloody World War I battle of Passchendaele.
Release Year: 2008
Rating: 6.7/10 (4,485 voted)
Director:
Paul Gross
Stars: Paul Gross, Caroline Dhavernas, Joe Dinicol
Storyline Sergeant Michael Dunne fights in the 10th Battalion, AKA The "Fighting Tenth" with the 1st Canadian Division and participated in all major Canadian battles of the war, and set the record for highest number of individual bravery awards for a single battle.
Cast: Paul Gross
-
Michael Dunne
Caroline Dhavernas
-
Sarah Mann
Joe Dinicol
-
David Mann
Meredith Bailey
-
Cassie Walker
Jim Mezon
-
Dobson-Hughes
Michael Greyeyes
-
Highway
Adam Harrington
-
Colonel Ormand
(as Adam John Harrington)
Gil Bellows
-
Royster
James Kot
-
Skinner
Jesse Frechette
-
Peters
Rainer Kahl
-
German Machine Gunner
Landon Liboiron
-
Young German Soldier
Patricia Benedict
-
Nursing Matron
Hugh Probyn
-
Carmichael
Brian Dooley
-
McKinnon
Taglines:
in love, there is only one rule... don't die.
Opening Weekend: $CAD847,522
(Canada)
(19 October 2008)
Technical Specs
Runtime:
Did You Know?
Trivia:
Extras were provided with 5mm wetsuits to make the hours and days of sitting and running in wet and muddy costumes bearable - even still many extras left after one day. A German full length jacket could weigh up to 60Lbs when wet and caked in mud.
Goofs:
Continuity:
The position of the German's bayonet over Dunne's chest during the scuffle.
Quotes: Michael Dunne:
Listen to me. Forests burn 'cos they have to. And oceans, they go up and down 'cos they have to. I don't think we're that different. If you want to get through this you have to start seeing it for what it is. It's something we do all the time because we're good at it. And we're good at it because we're used to it. And we're used to it because we do it all the time.
User Review
Beneath the surface
Rating: 9/10
Passchendaele is part unabashed romance and part horrific and quite
graphic war story.
In film World War One has been a neglected war compared to the more
morally unambiguous Second World War and the more recent Vietnam War.
And films that aren't about American participation are just as
neglected. Passchendaele fills that void.
The movie moves quickly and switches between home life and battlefield
with surprising ease and effect. I was not bored for a moment of this
movie. The movie will make you care about these people when they are at
home living their lives and then fear for them at war. While the battle
scenes are quite brutal, they are not sensational or exploitive, since
to have made them sensational or exploitive would defeat the great
effort this movie takes in showing how men had to cope with life after
the war and the memories of what they lived through.
Undoubtedly there will be cynics who will decry some moments as
contrived or melodramatic, but these are the small-minded who have
missed the real emotion of this film. The movie is great entertainment,
but there is something going on beneath the surface. This is the first
time I can recall a film where the main character is someone who has
been both emotionally damaged by the war, but does not succumb to it. I
suspect there must be many men coming out of the war who were damaged,
but quietly lived with that damage their entire lives. For that
depiction alone, this is a great movie.
The movie is not without humour and it has one of the funniest
seduction lines I've ever heard uttered by a woman in a movie.
The movie is entertaining, but there's a lot going on and much I
haven't mentioned as I don't want to click the spoiler warning. There
are scenes I'm still thinking about, which doesn't happen with every
movie I see.
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