The World War II experience, as depicted by Hollywood since the 1940s, logically has focused on the involvement of U.S. troops; during subsequent decades, our expanding impression of the Allied struggle against Nazi forces — on the large and small screen — has been augmented by equally absorbing and informative films from our British cousins.
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| Marinus (Gijs Blom), who betrayed his Dutch comrades by joining the German invaders, finds his beliefs shaken after a telling conversation with a disillusioned Nazi officer. |
No surprise, then, that it has fallen to Dutch filmmakers to properly depict how the Allied/Nazi clash impacted a considerable portion of the Netherlands.
Director Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.’s impressively ambitious De slag om de Schelde — re-titled The Forgotten Battle, for its Stateside release — is the second most expensive Dutch film ever made, and the money certainly is visible on the screen. This is riveting, old-style, war-era filmmaking, with hundreds of extras populating production designer Hubert Pouille’s jaw-droppingly expansive sets and locations.
The overall tone? Quite grim.
The story is set primarily in German-occupied Zeeland, the westernmost province of the Netherlands, following the June 1944 Normandy landings and subsequent incremental advance against Nazi forces. As cleverly illustrated by the interactive map that prologues this film, the Allies’ goal is to open a shipping route to Antwerp, in Belgium, to act as an essential supply channel.
As summer passes into autumn, the extremely complex script — credited to van Heijningen, Paula van der Oest, Jesse Maiman, Pauline van Mantgem and Reinier Smit — follows subsequent events through the eyes of three disparate (fictitious) characters.
Marinus van Staveren (Gijs Blom), a turncoat Dutch volunteer who joined the Wehrmacht in the naïve belief that Germany would improve conditions in his country, is introduced during a furious battle against Russian forces on the Eastern front. Marinus later wakens in a hospital, more or less intact, and comes to the attention of a disillusioned SS lieutenant, who — after having lost both his legs — has learned just how unscrupulous the Nazi concept of “fair” actually is.
“If you tell a lie big enough, and repeat it often enough,” the lieutenant laments, quoting Joseph Goebbels, “eventually people will come to believe it.”
(Boy, doesn’t that sound familiar?)
The lieutenant still has some juice with his superiors, and — in an unexpected act of benevolence — manages to get Marinus transferred away from the front.
Elsewhere, Teuntje Visser (Susan Radder) works as a clerk for her town’s collaborationist mayor. Her father, a doctor (Jan Bijvoet), does his best to remain impartial with respect to whom he treats, but both are scorned by Teuntje’s brother, Dirk (Ronald Kalter), who makes no secret of his hatred of the Nazis.
Still elsewhere, we meet British Sgt. Will Sinclair (Jamie Flatters) and his best friend, Capt. Tony Turner (Tom Felton, likely the only cast member recognized here, thanks to his Harry Potter fame). They’re both pilots in the troop-carrying Glider Regiment, which helps transport men to the front line.
(Gliders? Who knew?)
Will, Tony and their “payload” of three Allied soldiers become part of the airborne facet of Operation Market Garden: an awesome sequence of aircraft and gliders entering Dutch skies — superbly mounted by cinematographer Lennert Hillege and editor Marc Bechtold — and then doing their best to dodge ground-based artillery fire.
Alas, Will’s Airspeed Horsa glider is shot down, but manages a successful landing — thanks to his piloting skill — in a flooded Zeeland estuary. All five men survive.
With Operation Market Garden threatening to push German forces out of the Netherlands, the Nazi occupiers depart Teuntje’s town, in order to assist at the expanding Western front. Dirk, believing the Germans routed, reveals his colors with a brave — but deplorably foolish — act of defiance.
But the Allied operation stalls before completion — bear in mind the title of A Bridge Too Far — and the Nazis return to Teuntje’s town, now under the command of the far more imperious Commandant Oberst Berghof (Justus von Dohnányi) … with Marinus as his secretary. The Nazis haven’t forgotten Dirk, and Berghof calmly promises to kill random Dutch citizens until the young man turns himself in.
At this point, Teuntje learns that her brother is a member of the local resistance, and has been secretly photographing German positions along the strategically crucial Scheldt River. Her surprise mounts further, with the discovery that her friend Janna (Marthe Schneider), who runs the local bakery, also is a member of the resistance.
By cinematic necessity, all these characters eventually will converge, their interactions serving as a backdrop to this film’s third-act climax: the horrific Battle of Walcheren Causeway, every bit as brutal, graphic and heartbreaking as the “over the top, boys!” engagement that concludes 1981’s Gallipoli.
All three of the primary characters — Marinus, Will and Teuntje — evolve, savagely and of necessity, as the story unfolds.
Flatters’ Will, reckless and believing himself invulnerable, initially is cheerfully gung-ho in the manner of foolish British superiority. This cocky attitude soon drains from his pores, thanks to life-or-death combat decisions … and, shatteringly, dishonorable behavior within his own ranks. Flatters’ gaze becomes hard, his eyes black as death.
Teuntje, apparently having persuaded herself that the occupation will be only a temporary inconvenience, initially can’t process the fact that the Germans want to kill her brother. The enormity of this sudden realization erupts via Radder’s anguished expression and the wary, now-frantic shift in her interactions with everybody; she suddenly seems fragile. Teuntje goes through an accelerated version of the seven stages of grief: shock, denial, guilt, bargaining … and then resignation and hardened resolve.
Marinus’ emotional shift occurs more gradually. We expect that his encounter with the legless lieutenant prompts an intellectual awakening, but no; Marinus seems content to remain a loyal Nazi, even as he registers the Berghof’s callous treatment of the Dutch. Blom’s bearing suggests that pride remains in the way; unlike the others, Marinus chose to join the wrong side. Mentally arguing his way back is a herculean challenge, and Blom’s brooding gaze becoming ever more troubled and discouraged.
The script rarely preaches, and at times is surprisingly even-handed. During several key skirmishes and battles, it’s clear that many of these soldiers — whether British, Dutch or German — are little more than terrified boys, wondering what God could have been cruel enough to dump them in this place, at this moment in time.
Although the expansive ensemble cast moves events along, we’re equally transfixed by the authenticity of so many settings. None is more convincing, or disturbing, than the aftermath of the deliberate flooding of Zeeland’s Walcheren Island: an Allied action precipitated by the bombing of sea dikes, with the goal of slowing German movement. The resulting onrush of ocean water displaced the civilian population and wreaked ecological havoc.
And left a vast, swampy countryside, dotted with abandoned ghost towns knee- and chest-deep in water: a temporary haven for Will and his comrades, post-crash. Until the war intrudes on this sepulchral landscape, as well.
Heijningen concludes his film somewhat ambiguously; there’s no cathartic “cheering moment,” as was the case with the final scene in 1998’s Saving Private Ryan. This is appropriate; liberation of the Netherlands — on May 5, 1945 — still is months away, as the screen fades to black here.
That probably makes The Forgotten Battle more informative and enlightening, than satisfying: a riveting, alternative point of view, boldly and strikingly mounted. Heijningen clearly wasn’t interested in crafting a crowd-pleaser; as far as the Dutch were concerned, World War II was hell … and this film never lets us forget that.
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