Day 89 - Land of Mine



Day 89            Under sandet (Land of Mine) [2015]
                          
Screenplay                    Martin Zandvliet
Director                         Martin Zandvliet
Cinematography            Camilla Hjelm Knudsen
Music                            Sune Martin
Leads                            Roland Møller, Mikkel Følsgaard, Emil Benton, Oscar Belton, Louis Hoffmann, Joel Basman, Oskar Bökelmann
Production                     Nordisk Film, Amusement Park Films

IMDb                                7.8/10
Rotten Tomatoes                91%

I always struggle to put on films that you need subtitles for. It’s the extra effort of having to read the bottom of the screen to know what the fuck is going on, whilst still trying to appreciate the visuals. However, if you are in the mood, and you concentrate, foreign film can end up being pretty damn good. You learn to appreciate the beauty and nuances of another language, and the range that foreign actors have as they often speak multiple languages. Under sandet (the original Danish title) is a film that covers the aftermath of World War II in Denmark. Without getting into the politics too much – it covers the Danish/British use of German POWs to clear thousands of mines from the beaches of Denmark. A war crime under the Geneva convention, but largely overlooked due to how close to the end of the war it was, and also due to the fact they were German mines, so the thought process was ‘you put them there, you get rid of them’. Anyway, I guess this film covers the worst elements of this decision, the fact that among those POWs were teenage boys, drafted in late on in the war, many of whom had no experience in handling mines, and many of whom had possibly not even fired a shot. It’s a tense, sad film from start to finish. The boys are all brilliant, especially the Benton twins, and it was nice to see Louis Hoffmann in something else having watched Dark (which I recommend as a Netflix binge). Roland Møller was fantastic as the Sergeant in charge of the boys, despite the dodgy hat he seems to wear at all press events, his acting is first class. The storyline is strong, and the subject of the film means that you are constantly on the edge of your seat – whenever they are on the beach a mine could go off at any moment, it is tough to watch, waiting for the inevitable, and yet it always happens just when you don’t expect it. The reason it hasn’t quite received perfect marks from me is that I would have liked to know what the Sergeant’s back story is, we are left to make up our own mind as to why he has been assigned to this task, and why he is outranked by a much younger man. It is also questionable whether he would have been left in charge of the boys alone – in reality they could have overpowered him easily due to their number. The setting is a bleak, yet stunning one, emphasised well by Knudsen. It’s a fresh perspective on a saturated genre that I very much enjoyed.

Acting                             4 / 4
Writing                         3.5 / 4
Cinematography              4 / 4
Music                           2.5 / 4
HWF rating              3.5 / 4