Produced by Robin Garrels
Directed and Written by Chris Grega
Edited by Shawn Donoho and Scott Dorough
DP - Jaryd Wolfsberger
Pvt. Calvin Mayer - Derek Simmons
Lt. Frank Westman - R. Travis Estes
Sgt. Mike Bowen - Paul Wendell
Pvt. Eli Pastowski - Christopher T. Macke
Pfc. David Sorrenson - Brock Roberts
War is an infinitely repeating loop of hell fueled by the perpetual misery of the doomed souls condemned to wage it. At best, a soldier lives to fight another day, possibly training replacements for the unfortunate day when, at worst, they too die at the hands of some other damned soul suffering through the same fate. For those in the trenches, the victors are those who live long enough to make it home free from any lingering scars.
Award-winning filmmaker Chris Grega, structures his film, RHINELAND, around that loop and embraces the misery of those who fight tight enough to wring the breath out of their lungs. In Grega's world view, the hardest part isn't pulling the trigger, but weathering both the chaos of misinformation and monotony of mundane daily routine. There's no valor in Grega's take on war, just life, death, and those biding time.
RHINELAND opens in Germany, February 1945. The skies above are as grey and bleak as the men underneath, dredging through the wet snow. The images on the screen take on a monochromatic hue further enhancing banality of what lies ahead for the soldiers we'll follow. Very early on, in one of the more ambitious shots of the film, we track across countless vehicles and men at the front stuck in the icy mud. The metaphor is clear - war is a long road, both cold and lonely. You can drudge from one end to the other and still get nowhere.
Pvt. Mayer, fresh from Basic Training, is supposed to join up with an anti-tank unit. It's what he's been trained for, but after arriving at the front and sitting on his ass for three days he's absorbed into a mine platoon. There's a high turn over rate in the mine platoon, and it's easy to see why. The poor bastards cursed with this duty lie on their bellies inch-worming their way across wet roads and fields all the while stabbing the Earth every few inches to see if there's a mine just beneath the dead grass. If they're lucky, the soldier catches the sides of the mine allowing for proper disposal. If they aren't so lucky, and they catch the trigger, then they end up fertilizer. Again, the metaphors are clear and illustrate the futility of the grunt life.
Mayer's fellow recruits speak in those military cliches you hear in countless movies. "The infantry is a meat grinder, and we're the meat." "That's just like the fuckin' army. Nobody tells you where to go or what to do, but, Jesus Christ, hurry up and get there." But just because we've heard them before doesn't make them any less true, or less spoken in actuality. I've always attributed it to the training. The uniform nature in which minutia is drilled into raw recruits until they can perform on auto-pilot allowing reactive details to become instinctive echos of the teacher. The parroted dialogue works in the same fashion, and isn't dissimilar from regional colloquialisms. Besides, there's camaraderie in misery, and the easiest way to connect is through a shared, communal language. Grega often repeats thoughts and words, reinforcing the interchangeability of men in war time. Despite their differences, it's clear they're all the same - dead men walking.
At this point, I'm afraid some readers might be turned off fearing that RHINELAND is too heavy-handed for their tastes, and, truth be told, it probably is. In the world of microbudget filmmaking, where the lowest common denominator is key, depth can be death. I'm afraid that some of you might be turned off by referencing elements we've seen before, and while the movie certainly does echo films like PLATOON, something happens about 15 minutes in that sets Grega's film apart from other war films that somehow find a way to glorify the Us Versus Them nature of war. It's a small scene that some would even find disposable, but for me sums everything that Grega is trying to say and makes his film unique and personal. While in a small grove, after retreating from a mine field, Mayer's group stumble across a platoon of Germans. Mayer goes to shoot, but his Lieutenant tells him not to. The German grunts are in the same boat as the U.S. grunts: cold, hungry, worn out, and emotionally defeated. Nobody really wants to fight, they just want to live to see their families again. Both sides know that if anyone opens fire, chances are only a handful will make it back to their camps to put some of that horrible army pig slop in their bellies. No amount of slop is worth dying over. A German acknowledges the kindness with a wave that seems to say "I'll be sure to return the favor," and I'd like to think he will. The moment isn't really about who's the better man, or who's side is right, but rather acknowledging your fellow man because it's the humane, and human, thing to do.
I can't recall anyone in the film justifying their reasons for serving. There's no rally-the-troops moment before any big fight. It seems that films glorifying conflict come early in war time and serve as examples of patriot propaganda (not that there's anything wrong with that). Grega has made his film years into an extremely unpopular conflict where indifference has become the norm. The politics of Us Versus Them, of Right Versus Wrong, are no longer part of the equation. RHINELAND has the sort of a-political nature as another war film made around the same time, THE HURT LOCKER. Both films take different routes to reach the same conclusions regarding the futility of a soldier's life and cyclical nature of war.
While RHINELAND is no HURT LOCKER - it lacks the pizazz and outright intensity of the spectacle on display in its big-budget big brother - isn't without its moments of great action. Some instances are short and punchy - direct and to the point. They come at random moments, erupting out of the blue, and are every bit as jarring as they were intended. They don't succumb to that disorienting sloppiness microbudget productions often fall prey to when covering action. Grega and his Director of Photography, Jaryd Wolfsberger, keep everything slick and easy to follow, and that especially pays off during the movie's showcase set-pieces that are about as ambitious and impressive as anything I've seen in any independent war film. Grega and Producer Garrels enlisted a regimen of WWII re-enactors to assist. Their period garb, weaponry, and equipment give the film an air authenticity you wont find in other no-budget productions, and the RHINELAND feels far bigger than it is. Of course, actually taking the time to dig trenches and build forts is pretty damned impressive too.
Like any action director worth his salt, Grega knows that no matter how impressive the spectacle, character has to come first. All action sequences need to either stem from or affect the characters directly. Once Pvt. Mayer and his fellow anti-tank recruits land at the front they're met by Sgt. Mike Bowen. Bowen's the one who absorbs the men into the mine platoon, and it's not really clear whether he's actually following orders or taking the initiative and seizing an opportunity. He's the closest thing RHINELAND has to a traditional antagonist. If Mayer is the character whose struggles we follow as he learns to cope with war, then Bowen is his biggest obstacle. Hardened by the loss of so many friends, Bowen misinterprets Maher's idealism as cowardice and doesn't hesitate to call Maher out.
Their Lieutenant, Frank Westman, recognizes something of himself in Maher and tries to convince Bowen that when tested, Maher will come through. Westman doesn't doesn't exactly take Maher under his wing, with so much loss that sort of bond could be painful in the long run, but he takes the time to teach Maher some hard truths about war. Most important is that sometimes the right thing to do will get you and your men killed. Keeping his men alive, despite their risky job, is Westman's first priority.
Where Bowen starts to drown in the nihilism around him, Westman finds himself lost in the chaos. The question isn't whether Maher "rise to the occasion", but rather how he deals with continuing the cycle of hell. Grega doesn't provide any easy answers, there's nothing pat about the conclusions he reaches. He creates a set of universal truths and he sticks to them as he explores themes revolving around the disillusionment of his vast, vague subject.
A number of years ago, Grega earned one of a handful of B-Independent.com Underground Film of the Year awards for his crime film, AMPHETAMINE. If I still gave them out, he'd secure another one for RHINELAND. As a filmmaker, he's moving in the right direction. RHINELAND is more personal, emotional, ambitious, and simply better.
The DVD from VCI Entertainment includes a Making Of featurette, deleted scenes, photo gallery, cast and director commentary, and an unrelated short film, "Capdance."
VCI Entertainment 88mm Productions VCI Classic Films Blog about RHINELAND
