Deathwatch

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Movie
German title Deathwatch
Original title Deathwatch
Country of production United Kingdom , Germany , France , Italy
original language English , French , German
Publishing year 2002
length 91 minutes
Age rating FSK no youth
approval FSK 16 (shortened version)
Rod
Director Michael J. Bassett (now MJ Bassett, openly confessed trans)
script Michael J. Bassett
production Mike Downey
Frank Huebner
Sam Taylor
music Curt Cress
Robert Lane
Chris Weller
camera Hubert Taczanowski
cut Anne Sopel
occupation

Deathwatch is a 2002 European horror and war film directed by Michael J. Bassett .

action

During the First World War , a small group of British soldiers, among them the young Charlie Shakespeare, are lost at the front and are surrounded by thick, mysterious fog . Wandering around in it, a private stepped into the rotting corpse of a soldier and shortly afterwards they found a complex German trench . They kill the few German soldiers who are still inside and take you prisoner. He tries to tell them something, but he is gagged and locked in a kind of cage. When exploring and fortifying the trench, they also discover a complicated system of tunnels used by the Germans. In addition, there are several bodies of soldiers in the trenches who are not only in various stages of decay, but also apparently killed each other.

Soon one of the soldiers, familiar with the Bible, suspects that something strange and evil has lodged in the trenches. When a Scottish soldier flees because of this, he is gunned down by the very same comrade who suspected that evil was among them. The sergeant of the squad, assuming the enemy had shot at him, wants to save him and bring him back into the trench, but before he can reach him, the earth opens and the wounded soldier is pulled down. Charly, who was the only one who saw who really shot his comrade, asks the believing shooter why he did that, to which he replies that he could not let him go and that there was something evil in him, which would increasingly gain control over him . So he asks Charly to shoot him, which Charly refuses.

When more and more soldiers of his squad are slaughtering each other and the commander has long since lost his mind, the remainder interrogates the prisoner. He prophesies Charly, the only one who speaks French, that they would all kill each other. And in fact the Allied soldiers are killing each other bit by bit in a maddened state until only Private Charly is left. He frees the prisoner, who has meanwhile been tied to a tree by a comrade, and helps him back into the trench. Then he wants to search for survivors of his squad in the tunnel system, but first gives the enemy a rifle and advises him to leave if he does not appear again.

Then you see Charly lighting a glow stick and finding herself in a cave. Suddenly he hears the voice of one of his comrades asking him to turn around. When he did so, he saw all the dead soldiers in his company sitting in a circle around a fire in silence. Except for the sergeant, who calls him Shakespeare, all the others remain silent. He then exclaims several times that he is not dead and escapes from the cave in shock. Outside he calls for his friend Friedrich and suddenly hears someone loading a rifle. As he turns around, he sees the former prisoner pointing the rifle that Charly gave him earlier.

Charly asks him what that is about, since he had saved him. He then received the answer that this would be correct and that he was therefore the only one free. With a swing of his rifle he makes it clear to him that he should get out of the trench. When Charly turns away for a moment, the alleged prisoner has vanished into thin air and so Charly climbs a wooden ladder that leads him out of the ditch. Once at the top, he crosses a deserted battlefield and thus disappears from the viewer's gaze. Shortly afterwards you can see another Allied patrol, whose front soldier steps into a rotten corpse, just like at the beginning with Charly's squad. Then they discover the enemy and ask them to raise their hands. In the final sequence you see the face of the enemy who opens his eyes with a "knowing look" at that moment.

interpretation

The viewer does not come to a clear interpretation and explanation of the mystery up to and including the end. There are some indications that Friedrich is not a human being, but either evil incarnate itself or a kind of "judge after death" who ensures that everything is repeated over and over and that only those people are released from his custody who show humanity even in war and help an enemy themselves. The corpses shown in various stages of decay at the beginning also suggest that other troops had to endure this test before. Charly's comrades who are apparently alive again have to stay behind in the cave, which is probably a metaphor for hell. Apparently the assumption was correct that they were all dead before they got into the trenches and that the only decision was to make who goes to heaven or hell. This is also indicated by various radio messages that say that the company had fallen and were probably mistakenly interpreted as a misunderstanding by the radio operator. The author probably did not come up with a solution herself and has deliberately left room for many interpretations.

criticism

The lexicon of international films wrote that Deathwatch was "a horror film with some overly drastic effects that uses the resources of the genre to symbolize the horrors of trench warfare and conjures up a situation that is as claustrophobic as it is dehumanized."

German version

In the German version of the film, the German soldiers speak French.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ English language Wikipedia
  2. ↑ Deathwatch. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used