Passchendaele (2008)

I don't want anyone (most especially Canadians) to take my criticism of this movie to mean that I have anything but the height of respect for the courage and sacrifice of those who fought and died in WW1. I had the honor of being the first member of our family to pay their respects at the grave of my father's uncle who was killed in action in Belgium in 1916. Standing in the midst of those endless rows of gravestones was one of the most emotional things I've ever done. The futility and scale of loss endured by that generation is beyond imagination. I have also studied this period in history in some detail. That said, I was really interested in seeing this movie. Sadly I was very disappointed. The plot is so unbelievable that it ruins what should have been a realistic account of one of the saddest and most tragic periods in history. It's best described as "Mills & Boon" meets "All Quiet on the Western Front" with "Mills& Boon" winning the day. The film tries to be a war movie and a romance, but succeeds in neither and has to resort to visual clichés of the poorest kind, and a plot tissue-paper thin . I hope somebody makes a fitting tribute to the Canadian dead of WW1 soon, because this is defiantly not it.

Fmovies: Most of us have one or more great-grandfathers, other relatives or even friends ( I knew a WW1 Veteran as a small child, he was a pensioner with my great-grandmother) who fought with the Canadian Corps in Europe.

It was a brutal & dirty war where our soldiers paid in blood for Canada to be recognized as a nation. Moreover, they got the job done, without fanfare or banners: farm boys and clerks from a colony became the elite fighting formation of the western front.

The film depicts all of the above, the price each paid, in physical and emotional pain, in lives lost and friendships made.

Paul Gross has dome it again. A beautiful movie, without fanfare or banners that says it all, in subtle moments and firm assertions.

Thank you, Mr Gross.

Wow. Great flick!

Besides being an admitted movie addict, I'm also a retired professional soldier and a combat veteran who's served in multiple theaters of conflict.

I usually find myself quietly disappointed with war movies in general, and their vain, highly stylized, cliché-laden attempts to realistically portray infantry warfare, and high-intensity warfare's effects on soldiers. Film-makers invariably seem to fall far short in their attempts to capture the essence of what war can be (or was) like, and what exposure to it can do to the people involved, both mentally and physically.

To his great credit, I think that in Passchendaele Paul Gross seems to have actually managed to capture a reasonably authentic glimpse into both the nature of such hellish environments and the men caught up in them.

The acting was superb. The performances were so convincing that the notion that I was just sitting watching a movie didn't even occur to me until the credits began to roll by, I was so totally engrossed.

This film was easily one of the best that I've seen in quite some time.

I'll definitely be keeping my eyes open for any future films by Paul Gross. Passchendaele stands as an extremely impressive testimonial to his obvious talents.

Passchendaele fmovies. At last a genuine Canadian movie... Calgary is Calgary... The Americans didn't win the battle, didn't even turn up anywhere... There were no Stars and Stripes in every office. Okay, the plot --- a sort of WW1 Saving Private Ryan effort set against the bloody Belgian battle --- is a little far fetched. But the scenes --- both in 1916 Calgary and in the mud and horror of the battlefield --- are as good as those in any WW1 movie I've seen. There are believable characters well portrayed both in the script and by the actors. The effects are superb. The lighting and cinematography are sensitive and creative. And how very impressive that Paul Gross was a triple threat man. He wrote it, he directed it and he starred in it. That totals 300% This is as good as they come.

Passchendaele is part unabashed romance and part horrific and quite graphic war story.

In film World War One has been a neglected war compared to the more morally unambiguous Second World War and the more recent Vietnam War. And films that aren't about American participation are just as neglected. Passchendaele fills that void.

The movie moves quickly and switches between home life and battlefield with surprising ease and effect. I was not bored for a moment of this movie. The movie will make you care about these people when they are at home living their lives and then fear for them at war. While the battle scenes are quite brutal, they are not sensational or exploitive, since to have made them sensational or exploitive would defeat the great effort this movie takes in showing how men had to cope with life after the war and the memories of what they lived through.

Undoubtedly there will be cynics who will decry some moments as contrived or melodramatic, but these are the small-minded who have missed the real emotion of this film. The movie is great entertainment, but there is something going on beneath the surface. This is the first time I can recall a film where the main character is someone who has been both emotionally damaged by the war, but does not succumb to it. I suspect there must be many men coming out of the war who were damaged, but quietly lived with that damage their entire lives. For that depiction alone, this is a great movie.

The movie is not without humour and it has one of the funniest seduction lines I've ever heard uttered by a woman in a movie.

The movie is entertaining, but there's a lot going on and much I haven't mentioned as I don't want to click the spoiler warning. There are scenes I'm still thinking about, which doesn't happen with every movie I see.

Paul Gross' Passchendaele provides a unique perspective of the Canadian effort during the First World War. Those who are expecting just battle scenes will likely be disappointed.

For those looking for character development, some romance, an interesting perspective on recruitment pressure, and yes -- AMAZING battle scenes -- then yes, this movie is for you.

As a Military History student, I had no issues with the historical accuracy of the movie. Paul Gross based the first 5 minutes on his grandfather's story, and the rest is historical fiction. In general, it is an excellent representation of the period, and certainly provides a much more realistic version of the soldiers' perspective on war in 1917 than many other war films out there.

I highly recommend this film.