One of my all time favorites.

Must See Movie...

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

This is an astonishing documentary that will wring your heart while it bends your mind

In 1998 I saw a great war film that was lost in the glare of the nearly simultaneous American film releases of Terrence Malick's remake of The Thin Red Line- which is a great film, and Steven Spielberg's cliché and stereotype-dripping Saving Private Ryan. It was a 1997 Canadian and British film called Regeneration, directed by Gillies MacKinnon (who directed The Playboys, and Small Faces), based upon the famed book of the same title by British novelist Pat Barker. The screenplay was written by Allan Scott. There were a couple of differences between it and the other films; the first being that it was set during World War One, in 1917, while the other two took place during World War Two. The second was that Regeneration may have been the best film of the trio. In the years since, I have searched for the film on DVD, but it only was available in a Region 2 DVD format. Then, I recently found it online, released by Artisan DVD, for American audiences. The DVD is as bare bones as one can get- not a single bonus feature. But, even worse is the fact that it was released under a different, and far less compelling and more trite, title of Behind The Lines. Worse yet is the fact that this film is a bowdlerized, dumbed down version of the great film I remember seeing.While I cannot pinpoint all the changes from the original film, the overall effect on me was not as great. Oh, it's still a good film, but the greatness has been lost due to the cutting out of some scenes entirely and the trimming of others- to get the nearly two hour original film down to 95 minutes, and re-editing the film into shorter scenes that are interspersed with each other, designed to appeal to a more MTV and video game mindset. Lost in the rush to appeal to typical American idiocy was most of a small romantic subplot, and extended scenes between two of the main characters, the War Poets Siegfried Sassoon (James Wilby) and Wilfred Owen (Stuart Bunce). One has to guess that if the film had too much poetry in it that the McDonald's fed masses would be turned off. Yet, the worst cut, for me, comes about two thirds into the film, where Dr. Rivers (Jonathan Pryce), head of the asylum- Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh, Scotland, where shell-shocked soldiers go for psychotherapy, goes to London, on R&R, to visit a colleague, Dr. Yealland (John Neville), who is using a very effective form of electroshock therapy to get soldiers suffering from mutism to speak again. All these years later it was that scene, above all others, which stood out in my memory. As a mute soldier is strapped down and about to be shocked for the first time, the camera cuts away from the soldier, and as his agonal screams ripple outward, one only sees the slightly winced reaction of the doctor. It's a brilliant cut and displays the director's command of his craft, for it's a) always better to imagine such horrors, and b) the doctor is the more important character. However, in the Americanized DVD version, all that is lost. We see a standard, even generic, editing job of pain, the doctor wincing, pain, the doctor hanging his head, etc. Thanks, my native land!The film still has, however bowdlerized, more contemporary relevance than the other two films which drowned it out in 1998, if only because- given the current U.S. treatment of both its Prisoners Of War and veterans of the Iraq War, it shows how little supposedly 'civilized nations' have come in almost a century of warfare. It also touches on smaller aspects of the war, like mail censorship, which are never shown in war films, much less even discussed in many for a regarding warfare. While The film lacks the high tech graphics of its bigger budgeted cousins from 1998, the words of some of the poems, and the reactions of the soldiers say far more than mere 'shocking' images can, for words that are well chose can never inure their readers. Images, even great ones, can do just that through sheer repetition. That said, the best images in the film are not elaborate war scenes, but those designed to show the aftereffects of war on the human body and mind. As example, there is a young soldier who is a quivering wreck, wont to running naked through the woods and mutilating himself, because, we learn, he was thrown by a shell explosion, into the air and when he regained consciousness he was lying face down in the rotted corpse of a German soldier. Hearing what caused him to become so disturbed is more effective than showing his face inside a bloodied, rotting mass of flesh, for, as in the cut scene of Dr. Rivers turning away from the sight of electroshock therapy, what is imagined is always worse than what can be portrayed, for each individual will fill in the horror with their own fears, rather than having a fixed image in their minds.The cinematography, by Glen MacPherson, is stunningly realistic yet beautiful- especially in the sepia-tinged, color leeched war sequences, but throughout the whole film, as well; and it works well with the simple and understated musical score. It is a stark reminder that, then and now, one need not have all the high tech big budget special effects wizardry of a Steven Spielberg film to leave far more haunting images- perhaps the most effective one left in this bowdlerized film is the opening of a pair of human eyes buried in mud, so that the whites burn with startling intensity up at the viewer. If only the American distributors had not so badly butchered this film, from the title on, the rest of the film would have retained the intensity of those eyes which held me through nearly a decade.

"a moving account of troubled times". at times fluid, at times clunky this movie does exactly what it sets out to do...the depiction of the destruction - both in terms of lives and that of art - that war brings upon humankind. wonderful acting all round, from the main actors right down to the supporting cast especially in the final moving scene featuring a man looking introspective yet overwhelmed with joy who hugs and congratulates all around as the armistice bells signal the end of the war. this film brilliantly provokes the question, "what would i do?" sadly no film will ever bring us fully to the answer to that question but regeneration serves to move us that bit closer.

I watched this film last night,i thought it should have been on earlier,ma-by 9 o clock instead of 11.15pm as it was a lot better than films they usually show at that time on a week day.It was a very moving film with some brilliant acting,and the story is actually based on fact,as Sigfried sassoon did meet Wilfred Owen in a hospital for shell shocked officers.The rest of the film is fiction.The film makes a point in saying that only the officers got this privilege of being aloud rest when they suffered battle fatigue,the lesser ranks had to carry on until close insanity before they were discharged as sick. My own grandfather was one of these. He carried on having fits into the 1930s which led to his death from a bad fall in 1935 aged only 36,these were the other casualties of ww1. The British army did not want to recognise shell-shock and was totally unprepared for it.This film portrayed a very important part of history which unfortunately is almost forgotten,i found the film to be a very moving tribute to all those who fought and died in it.

There are very few films glorifying the first world war, called the "Great War" by those who fought and lived through it. If anything, Hollywood has avoided the subject and left it to a few European filmmakers, for very good reason. For sheer carnage, nothing has surpassed it. The slaughter of very young men was truly appalling. One can only imagine the reaction today if 50,000 men were dying each month to hold or advance over 100 yards of desolate mud. I went to school in England where the walls of our classroom were covered with the photos of pupils who had died in the war. Mostly aged 17. It was not until much later that I realised why there were so many unmarried middle aged women around in the 50's, when the writer Dr. Phyllis Bentley explained that there was no one for them to marry. An entire generation of men had been wiped out.Regeneration is a thoughtful anti-war film where the paradox of war is implied in a Scottish hospital for the treatment of shell shocked officers. The doctor has to get them well so they can be returned to the front lines, where they will more than likely be killed. The script is intelligent and the acting is superb. There are some allegorical scenes which do more to underscore the pigheaded arrogant mentality of the "establishment" which continued a war until quite simply, there was no one left to fight. Even sick men with TB were sent off to fight. Perhaps the saddest aspect of watching this film is when you realize that WWII began 21 years after the first once ended, just long enough for the new generation of soldiers to grow up.