MIFF Session #3: THE DAMNED

A platoon of Union troops during the Civil War are sent to an uncharted area of America as a measure both exploratory and military. No one seems to know which of those it is nor, quite what they are meant to be doing. They march and set up camp at the end of the day as the more experienced soldiers school the greenhorns in the use of the newer rifles and revolver pistols as well as techniques for sentry duty. Here and there we hear conversations about why they joined up and what they think of the war. And that's pretty much it.

Stephen Crane's short novel The Red Badge of Courage is plagued by two assumptions on the part of those who haven't read it: that it was written during the American Civil War and, that it is action packed. Crane was too young to have served in the war and published his imaginative work three decades after it was over. Most of the novel is set in the various camps and administrative situations and only in the final chapters does this heat up into action. The book is about a young man wondering how he will respond to the tests of warfare before, once neck-deep in it, how nothing he thought was anything like he finds it. While this film might feel like a lot of soldiers on a weekend workshopping retreat, it has a lot to owe to Crane's work with its raw dialogue and mix of homespun existentialism and old fashioned traditions. The soldiers, given a temporary reprieve from the fighting are left to guess what they are doing and the means they use to plug the holes in their understanding are not always convincing, even to them. 

There is an eerie quality to the setting here and while the film never trips over into supernature or horror, the sense that these are soldiers without warfare who do not comprehend where this has left them. When there are skirmishes with the enemy they are abstracted by concealment, knowable only by the flashes of rifles in the brush. As they travel further away from the conflict and its justifications, as they tread further into a frigid kind of ascension there is nothing more for them to do than wonder at the silence.

A strange film that will not appeal to many, The Damned is nevertheless, bold filmmaking. If you can imagine Terrance Malik or Andrei Tarkovsky attempting a film of The Red Badge of Courage you might get this. Be aware, if this description should entice, this is among the longest that eighty-eight minutes has ever felt for me. I think I'm the better for it.