THE BUNKER
UK, 2000, 92 minutes, Colour.
Charlie Boorman, John Carlisle, Jack Davenport, Christopher Fairbank, Jason Flemyng.
Directed by Rob Green.
This is tough going. The action takes place over two days towards the end of 1944 in the Ardennes. The Americans are forcing the Germans to retreat. A small squad of Germans is forced back to a bunker on the Maginot line, an extraordinary warren of tunnels and storerooms. The opening caption quotes Nietszche saying that if we stare into the abyss long enough, the abyss stares back. That is what happens to these men. They stare at their fears, the claustrophobic experience, their personal antagonisms, their courage and their cowardice. They are trapped in a physical and psychological maze that makes them fear the Americans are in the bunker stalking them. They also have personal memories of being in an execution squad which is more than aggravated when they stumble on an old cemetery filled with skulls and bones.
It is all well acted. The set is convincing. The moments of fright and psychological horror effectively paced. But most of us will ask whether we really wanting to be watching it no matter how well made it is.
1. The impact of the film? A war film? Psychological thriller? Horror film? The combination of each of these elements?
2. The World War II settings, France, the trenches, the forest, the fog? The focus on a German platoon, the role of the Americans in pursuing the Germans?
3. The focus on the Germans, 1944, the ending of the war, the Germans in retreat? The German experience, the Nazi oppression, the massacres, warfare?
4. The focus on the men's consciences, the final revelation of the massacre and the participation? Each of the individuals, their personality, their guilts, their fears? The surfacing of these fears, the projection of the psychological states into the real world? The men haunting themselves, one another? Violence erupting, the violence towards one another?
5. The plausibility of the plot, the psychological dimension? The credibility of the soldiers' behaviour? Their German ethos?
6. The picturing of the bunker itself, the vastness, the tunnels, the darkness? The skulls, the bones? Being built on a mediaeval tomb? The place of a massacre, the mass grave?
7. Corporal Baumann as the focus of the film, the others who despised him, their accusations that he wanted to desert? His handling of the situation? The pursuit of Kreuzmann, his post-traumatic stress and rushing into the tunnels? Baumann and Ebert pursuing, Ebert and his sudden death? The second American attack? The fears that the Americans were in the tunnels? Baumann finding the insane Kreuzmann, the mummified corpses? Baumann surviving, burrowing to the surface, his recovery, the memory of the events, the flashbacks to the murder of the deserters, his being forced to participate? His being with Neumann, deciding to surrender, walking into the forest?
8. The characters of the members of the platoon, Schenke and his taking benzedrene, his suspicions, his being hyped up, his killing Kreuzmann, the roof collapsing and killing Krupp, Schenke crazed, blowing up the munitions, the firefight and the other members of the platoon, his thinking they were the enemy? Schenke and his having been in charge of the mass killing of the deserters? Krupp, his discovering the munitions, his personality, his death? Mirus, the old man, holding the bunker, with Neumann, his knowing about the munitions, the locked door, knowing about the mass grave? Mirus and his belief about the ghost, his dead son, the evil spirits in the bunker, wanting to contain them, wanting to be free, caught in the barbed wire, his death? Ebert and his age, being with Baumann, the search, his death? Sergeant Heydrich, authority, his relationship with the others, searching with Baumann and Frankie, the discovery of Kreutzmann, his death?
9. The psychological portrayal of inner demons, of individuals, of the Nazi psyche, manifesting through the personalities of the soldiers? Destructively? The possibilities of heroism, survival?
