DAMNED, THE
(director/writer: Roberto Minervini; cinematographer: Carlos Alfonso Corral; editor: Marie-Hélène Dozo; music: Carlos Alfonso Corral; cast: Jeremiah Knupp (Scout), René W. Solomon (Scout), Cuyler Ballenger (Scout), Noah Carlson (Scout), Judah Carlson (teenage scout),
Tim Carlson (Sergeant); Runtime: 88; MPAA Rating: NR; producers: Paolo Benzi, Denise Ping Lee, Roberto Minervini, Paolo Del Brocco; Grasshopper Films/Rai Cinema; 2024-Italy-U.S.-Belgium)
“The slogan “war is hell” is supplanted by pointing out that war is mostly ponderous. Unfortunately so is the film.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
The Italian-born director Roberto Minervini (“Stop the Pounding Heart”/”Low Tide”) has been based in the United States for the last twenty years, living in NYC & Texas since arriving here in 2000. The docufiction filmmaker helms his first narrative (which seems as if it also could be a fictionalized documentary). He took his title from the great Italian director Luchino Visconti’s 1969 epic The Damned, which was based on Nazi decadence even though there’s no Nazis or decadence here.
The Civil War saga follows in 1862 a small band of volunteer Union troops (including a father and his two sons fighting only to get a paycheck to support their families and are not concerned with the morality or cause of the war) as they move through the desolate snowy regions of Montana, passing over gold mines, and through forests on their mission to chart the land for future soldiers. Their boredom between battles is shown as we observe the men when they’re preoccupied with pitching tents, doing their laundry, mending their clothes, playing cards and baseball, hunting, and concerned about the weather, their families, in treating their ailments and how good is the chow. But during war danger is always present, as with no warning a couple of soldiers are ambushed by the enemy and the troops quickly move to another camping site.
A questioning Christian soldier asks anyone in his squad the facetious question: “Does God approve of war?”
In this film, ‘the damned’ are the soldiers blindly pushing on in the darkness. Here the slogan “war is hell” is supplanted by pointing out that war is mostly ponderous. Unfortunately so is the film.
I’ll be damned but there’s only one battle scene.
It’s an artsy-fartsy period film that follows the troops tramping through the woods as if they were a Boy Scout troop on a weekend hike. There’s not enough action to call this the kind of war film that’s usually made in Hollywood. I’d bet you a couple of bucks John Wayne would have had something to say about this film that would be upsetting.
The cast are mostly non-professional actors, who are fine considering they’re amateurs. The script invites improvised dialogue and a social commentary that uses “aesthetic realism” to make its case that such a weightless film can still tell a story that has gravitas. The problem is I’m not quite sure what is meant here by gravitas.
It played at the Cannes Film Festival.
REVIEWED ON 5/14/2025 GRADE: C+
dennisschwartzreviews.com