How many milsurp nuts have seen Passchendaele?

canuck98k said:
One hour of some of the best WWI combat put to film is better than nothing.
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I won't dispute your right to your opinion and liking the movie is so much about personal taste that I can't say you're wrong, but I dispute the "1 hour" part. It was an hour and 55 minute movie and I'd dearly love for someone to time the movie from the second Gross wakes up in the bed to the second he is sitting in that trench. If it's only 55 minutes I'll eat my scungy shorts:)
 
I liked the mud and the battlefield scenes. A very few very minor technical niggles.

The audience reaction at the end was interesting. Very quiet. I don't think a lot of people realized how truely aweful it must have been. Lets be honest a lot of us Gunnutz do tend to glorify conflict a bit and have no idea what it was really like.
 
Rattus, I am likely guilty of rounding up. :D I agree it comes down to personal taste and even if I didn't like this movie I'm glad I supported it. Too often Canadians complain that there are no good Canadian films about Canadians. I think that when one comes along we should support it.

That doesn't mean we have to like it, but I am glad you put your money to good use and supported the film. The fact that you didn't like it is entirely fair, but let's hope our money will encourage more and better efforts in the future.
 
Saw it opening night. Was surprised about the turn out. Liked it, even though a little heavy on the love story. The scene locations are stunning for some areas and scary in others. Will go out and buy it once it is out.
 
I'm not sure where the thread I started last Friday went on this, but I'll chime in here too and say that I really was disappointed.
I really was hoping for a 50/50 split battlefield/other and all I felt I got was 90/10 soap opera/battlefield on this one. Seeing 1917 Calgary was fun for a little while, but honestly I found myself impatiently waiting for Passchendaele! When they got there the scenes were along the lines of what I was expecting, but actually I was thinking it would have been worse, as a lot of the poor souls fighting in those mudholes actually drowned before even taking a bullet, or choked on mustard gas.
In the end though, I'm interested in the facts of the battle, not Sarah Mann's morphine habit. Guess this one just wasn't made for me, but that doesn't mean it's a poor movie, I'm sure many will like it alot. I'm very happy that a Canadian made an attempt at least to illustrate our country's contribution to the first World War.
 
I was very disappointed in the movie. The sets and costumes were really the highlights. The script was garbage.

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- Typical Canadian multi-cultural in your face happy love fest.
- The whole crossing no man's land and pathetic German marksmanship and coming back with the kid on the cross. Almost puked a little in my mouth.
- The sappy and overly poetic, yet corny, dialogue over and over. A horse, man, river in the foothills...
- The poorly computer generated "kestrel" that kept making appearances.
- The way they all conveniently met up repeatedly in Europe. What are the chances?
- Calling the movie Passchendaele and marketing it as a war movie is beyond me.
- Paul Gross isn't a hell of a strong or believable actor.
- The movie didn't give any feel for what life was like in the trenches.
- Things like waiting until the Germans are on top of you to start firing. Good one.
- The Sgt giving orders and the officer present is silent for no apparent reason.
- The artillery was way too exposed and vulnerable. Especially since the Germans held the high ground.
- Doesn't even show the attack that captured Passchendaele.
- A cocked enfield rifle, next shot not cocked, next shot cocked, sloppy.
- Clearing the town in the beginning then getting cover and then cocking their rifles without firing a shot. Let's clear the village with no rounds chambered!
- Took place in October, the troops sitting in the water in shell holes / trenches would have been shaking uncontrollably from the cold and sleep would have been next to impossible. The actors in this look as though they are sitting in a warm bath tub.
- The painting of "HUNS" on the house in 1917? Pretty sure everyone would know exactly who was of German heritage in 1914.
- The fact that a huge number of "Canadians" at that point would have been immigrants yet no one in the movie has an accent.
- The kid was so annoying.
- The whole drug addiction.
- The cliché characters. Especially the evil Brit forcing the peace loving Canadians off to war.
- The feel of a made for TV CBC special
- The horse on the hill at the end?
- No shots of Tyne Cot cemetery or the cool Cross of Sacrifice memorial at Passchendaele which was build on top of a German bunker at the suggestion of King George V!

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I'm sure there is much more. I do give Mr. Gross credit for his attempt at making an important movie but I also have to say that he failed miserably. And I wanted so badly to like this movie, I tried and tried.

Hopefully someone else can do better.

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What you mean soldier trained to shoot at 200yrd wouldn't wait until the enemy was 50yrd away before opening up? If someone gave either side 4 square inches exposed, it would be removed posthaste. Still the movie wasn't that bad( given what they had to work with). I am disappointed that I didn't get to see any lily white ass in this war oriented movie(ala EATG with miss weis).
 
Fremen said:
Saw it opening night. Was surprised about the turn out. Liked it, even though a little heavy on the love story. The scene locations are stunning for some areas and scary in others. Will go out and buy it once it is out.
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In high school (where I learned a surprising large amount of Canadiana - it was neither "glossed over" nor sugarcoated - and I enjoyed it), we learned Passchendaele was about three things: (1) Mud, (2) Courage and (3) Futility. To me, the Third Battle of Ypres was a show of sheer Candian courage in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds - much like the 2nd battle of Ypres, where piss-soaked hankies and "piss & vinegar" Canuck will allowed the Canadians to stand firm and prevail while others (French Algerian Division - ahem - ahem) did not. ;)

It does sadden me that the "futility aspect" (the little bit of hard-won ground was lost soon after) was relegated to the typescript at the end of the movie. It does not lessen the heroism, bravery or skill of the Canadians one bit to acknowledge that the battle was a futile muck-about (the commanders could just as easily have told people to hold positions during those weather conditions, even with the idiocy of chare-counter charge trench warfare). I know you can't choose when the enemy advances, but you can choose when to charge, dang-it....:(

What always "bugged me" was the fact that the Canadians always seemed to be doing someone else's dirty work - but then again, I'm biased by that piss-head Montgomery's bypassing of Ortona in his "glory-boy" race to liberate Rome, leaving the Canucks to fight what effectively became cornered animals (the Axis had no place to retreat when Montgomery went on to Rome). :mad:

But I'm not the only one who thinks of mud, mud, mud: :D

55recce said:
I liked the mud and the battlefield scenes. A very few very minor technical niggles.

The audience reaction at the end was interesting. Very quiet. I don't think a lot of people realized how truely aweful it must have been. Lets be honest a lot of us Gunnutz do tend to glorify conflict a bit and have no idea what it was really like.
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Simply put, I think Gross HAD to make the movie with that much love-story, if only b/c was is still not all that palatable to most Canadians. Psychologically, it was worth getting the "hordes" of movie-goers in with the "bait" of a love story, as they were eventually exposed to the reality of what Canadians have done in the past for the sake of their country. We here on CGN may know how meaningful military service to Canada is, but the vast majority of our nation...:redface:

Maybe, just maybe, the viewers will even understand that war - in Afghanistan or elsewhere - is not something new to Canadians. And that victory in war is indeed possible (yes, nuts to the nay-sayers), even when seemingly senseless battles like the Third Ypres are involved.....:yingyang:
 
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Went to see it with a fellow collector, loved the battle scenes except for the ridiculous soldier on the cross episode. Rest of the movie was a bit contrived I feel.
 
Nyles said:
I quite liked it, right up until the scene at the end where he's carrying the kid on the cross. That felt really heavy handed.
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Quite a powerful symbolic scene though, and it fits with the whole charactar development of Micheal Dunne, as he loses his soul in the first part of the movie and reclaims it in the end by carrying his own cross up the hill at Calvary. The whole movie built up to that one scene, the whole thing was focussed around it.

As someone mentioned, the audience reaction at the end was interesting. Most of the people in the theatre I was in just sat there, watching the end credits, which was inset with real historical footage of WW1 soldiers. I don't think Canadians really understand what our country did in it's past and this movie was a great way to illustrate that to a wide audience.

I liked the movie a lot, but I'd certainly class it as a sweeping romance set against the backdrop of WW1 rather than a war movie about Passchendaele.
If you expect that, then it's great.
 
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JP said:
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Went to see it with a fellow collector, loved the battle scenes except for the ridiculous soldier on the cross episode. Rest of the movie was a bit contrived I feel.
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Okaaaay....
You went on a movie date with another guy.... Dressed up like characters in the movie... Nice ;)
 
Chuck3436 said:
Its ok.

The beginning and end battle scenes are well done and rememberable.

The entire middle of the movie is forgetable.
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I'm trying to see how it would compare to say "Saving Private Ryan" in terms of battle scenes, sounds like I'll wait for the DVD and enjoy it in the comfort of my own HT...
 
daroccot said:
I'm trying to see how it would compare to say "Saving Private Ryan" in terms of battle scenes, sounds like I'll wait for the DVD and enjoy it in the comfort of my own HT...
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cant compare to saving private ryan cos this is a love story , more like pearl harbor (ben affleck).
 
daroccot said:
I'm trying to see how it would compare to say "Saving Private Ryan" in terms of battle scenes, sounds like I'll wait for the DVD and enjoy it in the comfort of my own HT...
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Don't even rent it, just watch the trailer on TV because it shows every part of the movie worth watching!
Seriously though, wait until someone actually makes a movie about Passchendaele instead of "Passiondale" as I like to call this one. I'm just glad I used some free passes someone gave me to go in and see it.
 
Some colourized photographs of Passchendaele released in 2007.

They are the most remarkable pictures of one of the most hellish places on earth. Never seen before, these astonishing photographs, lovingly hand-touched in colour to bring to life the nightmare of Passchendaele, were released this week to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the battle that, between July and November 1917, claimed a staggering 2,121 lives a day and in total some quarter of a million Allied soldiers.
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