Men Go to Battle

I found this movie in a section on Netflix called award winning movies and after viewing the movie I figured it must of been a participation ribbon. The characters were so poorly portrayed that you could not make connection to them or care about what happens to them. The acting was wooden and tiresome, the plot poorly executed. Not a good effort and not worth watching.

"Men Go to Battle" (a somewhat misleading title) has its charms. The party at the Smalls' house vividly displays the similarities and differences between life then and now. (The research into detail will appeal to the history buff; although, this is not to say that every single detail is perfect because you can't expect perfection.) The plot points involving the Mellon brothers' competing ideas about how to run the farm and their sub-textual rivalry over Betsy Small (Rachel Korine) are compelling when reviewed in the end. Everything that happens leads up to a resolution of the brothers' relationship. We do not know what becomes of them after the movie ends, but we know that some things must be permanent.

Apparently, the movie achieved its economical budget ($500K) by using Civil War re-enactors to make the several military scenes. (They have their own costumes and gear, after all.) The war is far from glamorized. It is boring much of the time and parasitic on the civilians – except when it isn't, and you never know which it is going to be – and then, suddenly, there is death.

The story-telling is slow paced. The camera work is detached, static, ponderous, and often disorienting. When there are long shots – often starkly beautiful establishing shots – they are so static that they might as well have been taken with a still camera, but there are too many close ups and it is often too dark. The lighting appears to be entirely natural or at least imitates natural lighting. This is not a problem in daylight, but there are many scenes at night in which the actors seem to disappear into and reappear out of an inky blackness. What is going on? A second viewing does not clear matters up in every case. (Were the filmmakers too pure to use day-for-night filter technique to control lighting in night scenes?)

The dialogue is an odd mixture of the boringly pedestrian with sudden bursts of spontaneity. Consider a scene between Henry Mellon (Timothy Morton) and Betsy Small on her porch. There hasn't been a real conversation between a man and a woman up to this point. (Arguably, there still hasn't been afterward.) There is a party going on in the house, but, as it happens, Henry and Betsy both feel alienated from the frivolity, albeit for different reasons. There is a very long dialogue between them about the weather. It definitely has a subtext, which is interesting, but the bare text of the exchange is numbingly boring. (I am reminded of the late Judith Christ's observation that a movie that is about boredom is inevitably going to be boring.) The subtext almost earns this movie its mischaracterization as a comedy, but only if you do not fall asleep or gnaw your own leg off before the payoff.

A scene that illustrates the detachment of the camera and sound work occurs about halfway through the movie. Francis Mellon (David Maloney), Henry's brother, is in the general store buying supplies. There is a conversation between a clerk, whose counter is near the front window, and some Union soldiers who keep demanding tobacco even after the clerk has explained that he has no tobacco to sell them and knows no one else who has any. (The soldiers overhear Francis ask for some tobacco seed, and one of the soldiers comments, "You can't smoke that.") Francis then walks out of the store, but the camera remains inside, only showing Francis through the window. In the foreground, we continue to focus on the long-since pointless dialogue between the tobacco-jonesing soldiers and their dried up source. Suddenly, we become aware that Francis has said something to two soldiers passing on the street and one of them punches Francis, sending him to the ground. Only on second viewing do we hear the faint dialogue: Francis addressed the soldiers as "ladies", they took offense, and he got hit. Why is this in the background instead of in the fore?

I am glad I saw this movie, but I would not recommend it if you just want an enjoyable adventure that won't make work.

It's difficult to comprehend what it is some reviewers saw in this film. I see some of them saying it was like looking through a window into another time, and I suppose there may be some truth to that. But imagine someone looking through a window into your life on a random, drab, uneventful day, and how bored they would be watching you go through your daily routine. That is essentially this film.

Except it is worse than that. The characters rarely speak, and when they do it is never meaningful, just the stuttering utterances of awkward, unintelligent men as they stumble through the mundane events of their rural lives. There is virtually no emotion in any of the characters: they are all drab, dour, and boring. Emotional characters whose motivations and desires are clear and relatable can sometimes draw us into something even if it lacks a compelling plot, but this film has neither. Not only does it lack a compelling plot, it lacks any plot at all. There is no pacing to the story: no rise, no fall, no drama. The film even managed to make a civil war battle seem drab and boring. The character who goes to war is not animated even when life and death hang in the balance. He shows no fear, no passion, none of the hatred for the enemy that men summon to compel them to kill before their foes kill their friend and themselves. He seems to have a friend who reads and writes letters for him, but we do not see whether his friend falls in battle, and he certainly never looks for him.

Understated is not always bad, but this film stretches it to unstated. The film has nothing to say, nothing to show us, and absolutely no point. I simply cannot imagine how anyone would come away from this experience not feeling like they were robbed of their time. If not for the anticipation of hoping that something might happen (nothing does), I could have had the same experience watching paint dry, and would have come away no less emotionally or intellectually satisfied.

As a final note, the title of this film feels quite inappropriate. There is no conflict in the film to which that assertion applies, and if it is merely a statement of what the film is supposed to be about, it is also incorrect. If they're just trying to tell us what's going to happen (almost nothing), it should rightly be "A Man Goes to a Battle, While Another Does Not" and neither has any clear reason or motivation for doing or not doing these things. I thought perhaps toward the end there might be a conflict, the brother who stayed resenting the brother who left for abandoning him, and the brother who left thinking the brother who stayed a coward, or something, and perhaps telling him that "Men Go to Battle" as a challenge to his manhood. Alas, conflict would require emotion, and both conflict and emotion seem utterly beyond the abilities or intentions of the filmmakers. Instead the characters simply plod along, and the paint slowly dries.

The story is about 2 brothers in Kentucky, Francis and Henry, hard pressed economically, in the winter at the start of the American Civil War, 1861. They live on a farm overrun by weeds. The brothers horse around at a camp fire one night with knives and Henry gets a bad cut. They seek medical help at the estate of the Smalls, a well to-do shopkeeper family in the area. While waiting for Henry to be treated, Francis socializes with the Smalls and their guests at a party being held there. Henry returns, see his brother socializing, feels left out and disappears into the darkness. Francis, now alone, take steps to work the land. Meanwhile, Henry joins the union army and enjoys a life of getting 3 square meals a day in exchange for his service. The two brothers correspond by letter, each forging their own destiny. The climax comes when Henry's unit is overrun and wiped out in a battle. Being the lone survivor, he reject military life, deserts, and makes his way back to the Kentucky farm. Upon arriving at the farm, Henry discovers Francis is now a successful tobacco farmer and married to a Small. The Smalls, on the other hand have lost their business and are out in the cold. This movie is a parable about how one pursues his vision of possibility for the future and another forgoes that and settles for a life of basic survival. This is a universal lesson in life. Each moment, the universe hold an infinite number of possibilities. We choose only one in this life. What we choose can lead to a life from rags to riches or a life of rags to one of being a wandering army deserter.

Obviously, there are viewers who love this movie and others who hate it. I love it. It's atmospheric, with clear ties to a particular place (rural Kentucky) and time (early in the Civil War). The relationship between the brothers is full contradictions and conflict as well as brotherly love and disappointment--if you like movies about relationships, it's fascinating. I was left wondering what happens to Henry, the more complex and conflicted brother, who disappears at dawn at the end of the movie.

I don't recommend this for people looking for a "war flick", but there are some viewers, myself included, who think this movie is a gem (and have no "financial interest" in it, as one reviewer seems to think). We just don't all like the same things, right?