The Damned

Film

7,0

5.9K

The Damned it's a movie with René W. Solomon, Cuyler Ballenger, Jeremiah Knupp, Timothy Carlson, Noah Carlson Full cast. Directed by Roberto Minervini. Original title Les Damnés Genres War, History.

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Review of

Emiliano Baglio

Winner of the Best Director Award in the Un certain regard section of the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. 1862, during the Civil War a handful of volunteer soldiers are sent to the ends of the world to map the wild lands of the North West. The Damned, the first film by fiction by Roberto Minervini, is a Bastiani Fortress in movement. If in The Desert of the Tartars, the wait was all consumed inside a closed place, here the same feeling pervades the march of the soldiers and their every action. This time the enemy , but suddenly he appears, but he is still invisible, they are shots without identity coming from the woods. Perhaps they are apparitions, like the few human beings that ours encounter. On the other hand, as the title of the film itself specifies, the fate of ours is already marked.For the first time Minervini, apparently, totally embraces fictional cinema without however giving up the distinctive characteristics of his poetics.If his previous works often moved on the ridge that separates reality from staging, mixing the cards in hybrid products; this time the path is exactly the opposite. The actors, for example, are all non-professionals; some are people the director met in his previous works. The dialogues were constructed starting from their experiences; for example, the protagonists of the previous Stop the pounding heart (Stop the pounding heart. 2013), discuss their relationship with God. This sort of staging, starting from fragments of reality, clashes with the accuracy with which the director faithfully restores 1862 almost as if it were a historical anthropological reconstruction of that era. But it is above all in the centrality of nature that the author's eye clearly emerges is in the centrality of nature. An abandoned horse desperately trying to free itself while around him lie the corpses of soldiers. The snow falling on the beards and in the mouths of our protagonists, Read all

Homo homini lupus of

Diego Cineriflessi

Roberto Minervini, Italian by birth and American by adoption, made his name in international cinema with documentaries that described modern American society in all its contradictions. He now approaches fiction without denying his art as a documentary maker and tells us about the American Civil War by following a group of comrades sent on scouting missions without great chances of success. As is clear scene after scene, what Minervini is interested in, however, is not telling us a story, but immersing us in that situation. His story becomes a sort of imagined documentary of times gone by. Scene after scene he wants to show us the fatigue of war and how inhospitable and cruel nature can be. With a precise use of sound it makes us feel abandoned in the middle of a forest with the wind blowing and freezing our heads, the snow freezing our feet and only the crackling of a fire made with wet wood trying to give us relief. We are more in the area of The Thin Red Line than Saving Private Ryan, even if the religious inspiration is decidedly more contained and the soldiers' reflections are relegated to a couple of scenes that are not too original. Everything is inspired by a homo homini lupus also recalled by the opening scene. There is little hope even among those who belong to the faction that we know will win the war. In the end, The Damned is a film more of form than substance which unfortunately struggles to captivate because its characters are little more than sketchy despite the inquisitive close-ups. Good technique but little soul and for today's cinema it's a bit little. Read all

Review of

Cinedan

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plot

Winter 1862. In the midst of the Civil War, the US Army sends a company of volunteer soldiers to the western territories, with the task of patrolling the unchartered borderlands. As their mission ultimately changes course, the meaning behind their engagement begins to elude them.