CANNES – Going to war is an eternal condemnation for a man. The senselessness of battle marks the end of something that will leave him damned and condemned.
Presented in the Official Selection of the Festival de Cannes (Un Certain Regard) and distributed theatrically in Italy by Lucky Red on 16 May, The Damned by Roberto Minervini, a period film set during the American Civil War, focuses on a small group of volunteers sent by the Union Army to occupy the unexplored territories of the West.
The title came before the writing of the film, says the director, because of the double meaning in of being both damned and condemned that the term encapsulates. A spiritual concept that refers to eternal damnation and heavenly judgement: a religious component that is clearly present in Minervini’s story about men at war, locked in a constant, losing battle with reason. They continually question the meaning of war in search of a purpose, of any meaning that could make it right. They refuse to believe in something without sense. An absolute absence that becomes perversely sacred at the moment when it can offer no other possibility than to transcend reason.
The film is structured in three parts: before during and after the battle. After the battle, all that is left is the chimera of escape, which – gradually – as the story develops, becomes increasingly distant and unreachable. “War becomes an existential condition that it is impossible to leave, being involved in war as a human condition is the most profoundly dramatic aspect of the film, which denies the conflict any possible justification.”
“I’ve always had a problem with war films because of the archetypes they encapsulate”, notes Minervini. The idea of a rightful cause; the dichotomy of good and evil; the principles of revenge and martyrdom; the muscular depiction of masculinity; victory valued above all things, transcending the count of the dead which become only numbers, never names. “It’s an approach that I find impossible to think of as human, which actually contributes to the opposite, to spreading a false representation of war, that borders on propaganda”.
Here Minervini’s undertaking is almost to rewrite an entire cinema genre, the war film, by turning around the prospective: the focus is man, the individual with whom the viewer has a direct, almost intimate, one to one relationship; the intimacy assisted by the type of lens chosen for the shoot, a wide angle with focus only in a central part where the director moves the individual character he wants to highlight.
Another unusual aspect is the absence of the idea of a frontline, both as a field of action and of a offensive line, that is often present in war films. “The frontline gives the idea of ordered attack but, in truth, chaos rules supreme in a firefight and it is absolutely impossible to identify where the shots come from. The difficulty in seeing the enemy and the loss of a perception of time are aspects that are very present in the film.”
The work carried out on the ground by the director, who has lived and worked in America for many years, was very important, including meeting with veterans, especially on the fringes of society and in the deep South where they have a massive presence. Many are mercenaries who signed up for money, without any deep motivation or even much understanding for the causes of the war.
“I met with them several times and there was never any puffed-up consideration about the figure of the fighter, the warrior, of anything more than the common man trying to make it to the end of the month in our conversations. On the contrary, we often talked about how even a forewarned soldier is stunned when he finds himself on the frontline when battle comes.” A kind of paradoxical disbelief that can be compared to the strange awareness of the human of his own mortal state that becomes tragically breathtaking at the moment of death.
The noise of the weapons and explosions in the film derives in a large part from recordings we made of period rifles. As the battle advances, the sound of rifles distorts and becomes contemporary until, at a certain point, there is the explosion of a grenade. It becomes the sound of all wars beyond the historical, with an increasingly strong reference to an existential condition: “War is a silent conflict, of silenced shouts, where all that remains is the echoes of gunshots, from 19th century muskets to the automatic rifles of the present day”.
The Damned is a coproduction between Italy, United States and Belgium; while mostly shot in America, scenes were also filmed at '4 Studios' in Turin. Produced by Okta Film and Pulpa Film with Rai Cinema, in coproduction with Michigan Films in association with Stregonia and Moonduckling Films, it was supported by contributions from MiC – Direzione Generale Cinema e Audiovisivo (€80k in selective contributions and tax credit requested), Fondo Audiovisivo Friuli Venezia-Giulia, Film Commission Torino Piemonte, Centre du cinéma et de l’audiovisuel | Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, Tax shelter du Gouvernement féderal de Belgique, Taxshelter.Be e ING, Cavco – Federal tax credit program of Canada, Sodec – Provincial tax credit program of Québec.
From a production perspective, the film cost less than €2.5 million, a low budget for this kind of film notes Paolo Benzi of Okta Film. “The coproduction formula made it possible to make this project work, with its free and strongly writer-driven perspective. “The director’s approach is priceless because the classical mould of the industry, with its market laws, risks getting caught up in dynamics that don’t allow much freedom.”
Winter 1862. In the midst of the Civil War, a detachment of volunteers from the Union Army is sent to patrol unexplored territories in the West. The mission is overwhelming for the small group of armed men, as the true purpose of their journey to the frontier is revealed.
“After many films in the hybrid space of “creative documentary”, The Damned is a new challenge for me: a period costume drama, without relinquishing the realism, the directness and intimacy of my previous work. I hope that The Damned at the Festival de Cannes will be as surprising as it was for us who worked on it.” (Roberto Minervini).