The battleground in veteran Italian director Gianni Amelio’s atmospheric feature is nominally Europe in the last furlong of the 1914-18 conflict, but the real subject is the war that the Italian government declared on its own people. There are aspects of this all-too-true story, based loosely on Carlo Patriarca’s 2020 novel The Challenge, that will resonate throughout the world, and one might think that post-Vietnam America would be especially receptive to a story about the callous deployment of young, blue-collar men into savage conflicts from which they will almost certainly never return. Amelio’s film, however, while perfect for the local market, isn’t exactly likely to cross over.
The director sets the scene with grim images of bodies piled higher and higher in bleak muddy trenches. The year is 1918, and the armistice is just around the corner, but no one on the front line can possibly know that yet. Soldiers pass through the corpses, and though we give them the benefit of the doubt (are they looking for signs of life?), it soon transpires that these men are just opportunistic thieves, relieving the dead of their wallets and greedily snaffling the stale crusts they find in their pockets.
Some, however, have survived against the odds, and we follow them to a military hospital run by Stefano (Gabriel Montesi) and his second in command, Giulio (Alessandro Borghi). Stefano and Giulio came up through medical school together, but their attitudes to their patients could not be more different. Stefano, from a higher-class family, despises the majority of the men that he sees in the wards: misfits and losers, he calls them, even though he affects to treat every soldier — whether hero or coward — the same. Giulio, however, has other ideas, not only rejecting Stefano’s cruel authoritarianism but, as we are about to find out, actively undermining it.
Stefano is a very interesting villain, a capable doctor who despises the sick and wounded. He patrols the wards looking for the fakers (he calls them “These disgusting curs”), men who exaggerate their injuries or even harm themselves to get sent home. “When the war ends,” he says, “the honest and most valorous men will all be dead.” He soon sniffs out those who have staged their own injuries and revels in sending them back to the front line. The righteously wounded, however, get his praise — one man, covered in bandages, in particular. “You’ll get a medal,” beams Stefano. “Can you fix my face?” pleads the man, addressing a concern that is much, much closer to his heart.
Sacrifice is a big theme in Battleground, and Amelio’s main thesis is this: How much of a sacrifice are you actually making if someone else is making you make it? Isn’t that murder? This is where Guilio comes in, and his character is absolutely fascinating: his mission statement, as per the Hippocratic Oath, is to save human lives, but the lengths he goes to are extreme (and necessarily so, in the circumstances). Guilio recommends amputations, makes one soldier deaf (for a limited period), and injects a partially blinded private with gonorrhea to temporarily shut down his other eye. Surprisingly, some resist, however, believing that it’s better to be dead than disabled, a thought process that sends some of the invalided back to war, to die with their friends.
Guilio quickly gets a fan club, though they don’t know who he is (his nickname is “Holy Land”). Stefano has his suspicions but, for dramatic purposes, he fights them. Things come to a head when a new nurse, Anna (Federica Rosellini), arrives. There’s immediately a connection between her and Guilio, who remembers her as a high-achiever from college. So — later on — does Stefano, who recalls the sexism of the tutors who refused to give Anna her rightful grades, simply because she was a woman. A physical or spiritual menage à trois is hinted at, though — maybe it’s a problem with the English subtitles — the specifics of it are, quite frustratingly, never fully explained.
Equally frustrating is the structure of the film, which dispenses with the three-act structure in favor of just two. In the second act, the story takes a surprising turn with the introduction of a public health issue that is decimating soldiers and civilians alike. This turns out to be the Spanish Flu, a precursor of Covid and antecedent of Pfeiffer’s Bacillus, both deadly strains of influenza that the authorities refuse to take seriously. “We risk losing the war,” an increasingly panicked Stefano tells his superior. “For a cough?” comes the reply. Well, we know where that line of thinking takes us.
It’s a fascinating slice of history, offering interesting parallels to today and posing good, politically charged questions about the ethics of saving young men — and they are always young men — from the casual slaughter of war. But after that, despite terrific performances from the leads, and especially Borghi, Battleground simply fizzles out, leaving us with the tantalizing thought of the more thorny, complex, relevant film it could have been.
Title: Battleground (Campo Di Battaglia)
Festival: Venice (Competition)
Sales Agent: Rai Cinema International
Director: Gianni Amelio
Screenwriters: Gianni Amelio, Alberto Taraglio
Cast: Alessandro Borghi, Gabriel Montesi, Federica Rosellini, Giovanni Scotti, Vince Vivenzio, Alberto Cracco, Luca Lazzareschi, Maria Grazia Plos, Rita Bosello
Running time: 1 hr 43 mins
