Movie blog: Under Sandet : Land of Mine

When the booklet of the Belfast Film Festival came out, this movie caught my eye. We all know our WW2 movies about the heroic liberation of Europe but not many movies are made about the aftermath of the war. But it is 71 years since the end of WW2 and more of these types of movies are popping up.

I was happy that a movie like Der Untergang was made in 2004. We all know what great evil Hitler was and he did turn on his own people when they started to rebel or just plainly disobey orders. Even before the Nazi regime took hold of the world, Germans had questioned his intentions but were met with violence and murder. When I watched a documentary about the roll of Russians and British soldiers marching in Germany at the end of the war, I was disgusted. Pillaging and rape occurred under the German population just because they were German, they were bad and they deserved it in the words of a British veteran. Committing such crimes make you no better than the Nazi regime, still don't understand why people justify these crimes instead of condemning them. And it never stopped because we do hear of events in current war torn regions where soldiers abuse their power of protection to hurt others intentionally.

Under Sandet (Land of Mine) is a movie about such events after the war. You follow 14 young prisoners of war that have to clean up 45.000 of the 2 million mines left by the Nazi occupation on the Danish coast. 

Great role by Roland Møller as Sgt. Carl Rasmussen who is in charge of this group in deactivating the mines. He is torn by his anger and hatred for the occupation and caring about the fate of these young boys. What was gripping is that these soldiers couldn't have been older than 19. And the books have taught us that even though some joined the army voluntary, a lot of young boys have been pressured or just taking in army service.

At times the movie tensions ran very high because you only hear the rolling of the sea and the squawking of seagulls when a mine goes off taking his unlucky dismantler with him. I was sitting on the edge of my seat when you see the shaking hands of the boy trying to get the pin out, known it could be the last thing he'd ever do.

When you hear a young boy scream for his mother when his arms are blown off because he made a mistake, you realise this is a gruesome reality and just hope the kid dies soon to end his suffering. 

All the actors who played the boys are excellent performers at such a young age. I hope to see them more in the future. Movies like this show us what happened after the war, that not even the allied forces worked without sin. The mistakes made in the past should teach us to be more cautious in the future. And empathy has no bounds not even between enemies.