LAND AND FREEDOM
A film review by T. Robin Sutherland
Copyright 1995 T. Robin Sutherland
LAND AND FREEDOM is a difficult film to watch, for many reasons. First and foremost, it is a war film and since Vietnam, war films have typically been about skewed politics, lost idealism, the vanity of the glory of war, and pain and death without reward. This film is not an exception.
It is also initially difficult in that it is a film whose protagonists are from many different countries: they are volunteers and mercenaries rallied from across the world to fight Franco in the Spanish Civil War. This creates a very rich atmosphere for the drama of the film as one gets used to the sporadic subtitling, outrageous accents, and lost dialogue which is either too rapid or stilted to be translated.
And it is finally a difficult film to appreciate without a fairly detailed understanding of the elements of the Spanish Civil War. To have known that the Poum (the faction to which the main character has become attached) was actually a Trotskyist splinter group would have made a significant difference to my viewing. Many local political problems constitute the focus of conflict on both regional and personal levels.
But war films are supposed to be hard to watch: war is not a simple thing--it is the essence of politics, and in this spirit, the film illustrates many themes. Textbook idealism, for one, does not translate well in the battlefield. What you believe you are fighting for may be utterly at odds with the politics of your group (despite their propaganda). Relationships which are sound and strong may be lost in a moment over a political detail. Loyalty wears many uniforms. Most of the fighting is not in the trenches. And, of course, people die for no comprehensible reason. All of these points are made strongly and specifically enough to make you regard them as more than the cliches of war--they are experiences of each fighter, and you must see each in its own context.
This film is beautifully shot. Most of it is (necessarily) presented in picturesque outdoor locations which contrast with the brutality of its action. Two sequences attract particular attention. One somewhat overlong sequence outlines the local political infighting which takes place when the Poum tries to decide to collectivize a captured estate. Here it would have been interesting to contrast the local politics of the Poum against their "official" political line, but the confusion is indicative of the splintering which causes the freedom-fighting factions to actually fire on each other later on. A second sequence involves the capture of an enemy position--the action sequence is frantically paced and artfully executed, and creates a novel build to the film's actual climax.
Ian Hart has no difficulty in his role as the misplaced man from Liverpool whose ideals exceed his understanding. His frustration is as thick as his loyalty to the principles for which he left his home. His character is incredibly honest, and places the common man's plight to preserve freedom and decency in the world squarely in the swamp of world politics. He is easy to identify with, despite his obvious distance from the audience's context, and it is impossible not to sympathize with him without being deeply cynical.
This was not a profound movie for me, but it was an engaging, educating, and at times, genuinely entertaining film. I would recommend it, not as an art film, nor as popular fare, but perhaps as a film which may provide an honest look at a sparsely filmed bit of history, presented plausibly from an outsider's point of view.
-- T. Robin Sutherland Movie Buffs Rant: http://www.interlog.com/~robin/rant/movies/movies.html
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