Men Go to Battle | Little White Lies

Men Go to Battle

08 Jul 2016

A bearded man wearing a black hat and brown jacket, standing in a grassy field.
A bearded man wearing a black hat and brown jacket, standing in a grassy field.
2

Anticipation.

Festival reception was fond but muted, despite good underdog story potential.

3

Enjoyment.

Inspired, rough-hewn filmmaking for a fairly tentative Civil War yarn.

2

In Retrospect.

Hard not to admire its existence. Equally hard not to wish it was more daring.

Zachary Treitz’s lo-fi Civ­il War com­e­dy offers an admirable, inven­tive take on a stodgy subgenre.

Some inde­pen­dent ven­tures gain our respect – in a way that’s slight­ly removed from their ulti­mate qual­i­ty – because their pas­sion­ate mak­ers have attempt­ed some­thing tru­ly auda­cious and achieved a phys­i­cal prod­uct of their vision in spite of seem­ing­ly insur­mount­able odds.

In the wake of Gary Ross’ ano­dyne, over-bud­get­ed Civ­il War rebel­lion dra­ma Free State of Jones, Zachary Treitz’s Men Go to Bat­tle arrives offer­ing some­thing gen­uine­ly unique: a qui­et Civ­il War com­e­dy, made on a vis­i­bly shoe­string bud­get in off-the-grid Ken­tucky with no stars or spec­ta­cle to be found. Set in Ken­tucky cir­ca 1861, Treitz’s fea­ture-length debut fol­lows a year in the life of two farmer broth­ers, shy Hen­ry (Tim Mor­ton, play­ing the part with a dour­ness that evokes a drowsi­er Buster Keaton) and dimwit­ted Fran­cis (David Mal­oney), whose sleepy back­woods exis­tence is dis­rupt­ed when the for­mer runs away to enlist in the North­ern infantry.

The film is a true anom­aly, not just pep­pered with but ful­ly pow­ered by a side­long sense of humour that reach­es nei­ther for broad laughs nor bit­ing, MASH-like farce. In one scene, Hen­ry timid­ly flirts with the kew­pie-doll daugh­ter (Rachel Korine) of an upper-crust fam­i­ly in a con­ver­sa­tion that revolves, almost mad­den­ing­ly, around weath­er pat­terns. It’s hard not to appre­ci­ate the dis­tinc­tive pecu­liar­i­ty of moments like these, which occur almost unceas­ing­ly at the front-end of Treitz’s script, writ­ten in col­lab­o­ra­tion with pro­lif­ic indie actress-pro­duc­er Kate Lyn Sheil, who also played a part in the edit­ing of the picture.

But there’s some­thing miss­ing from Men Go to Bat­tle, which doesn’t get mired down in the emp­ty peri­od trap­pings of Free State of Jones, but fails to ful­ly con­vince as a full-blood­ed immer­sion into its his­tor­i­cal set­ting. Brett Jutkiewicz’s rig­or­ous­ly ragged cin­e­matog­ra­phy pads the film with some decid­ed­ly grainy atmos­pher­ic shots but nev­er los­es the impres­sion of some­one bring­ing a cam­corder into the for­est. Sim­i­lar­ly, the men’s cos­tumes all feel like they were grabbed straight from the back rack of the thrift store and every actress on screen sports a head of hair that looks fresh­ly and dis­tract­ing­ly conditioned.

And for all of its intrigu­ing­ly odd­ball instincts, the script has seri­ous trou­ble crys­tallis­ing into any­thing more com­pelling than a tale of two broth­ers and their rugged­ly quirky sur­vival­ism. Tre­itz and Sheil often get in their own way with an abun­dance of undis­guis­ed­ly mod­ern dia­logue (“Does this dress look aggres­sive?” Korine asks at one point) and frus­trat­ing­ly-unbal­anced struc­tur­al ten­den­cies. They’re much too inter­est­ed in the list­less tedi­um of the broth­ers’ dai­ly home life and share an unnec­es­sar­i­ly gen­er­ous por­tion of their shift­less fight­ing and prank­ing, which in turn rel­e­gates Henry’s expe­ri­ences on the front­line to the back-half of the film, even when it’s clear that this wartime por­trait is its real momentum.

The bat­tle sequences remain impres­sive in spite of bud­getary con­straints – as does the lo-fi, score­less sound design – but they sur­round a sto­ry that has a hard time pen­e­trat­ing its own sur­faces. When Hen­ry stum­bles upon a fron­tier home­mak­er (Emi­ly Cass McDon­nell) whose hus­band is away at war, it appears that the film is mak­ing a promis­ing for­ay into more per­son­al, Grand Illu­sion ter­rain. But it only needs the character’s sym­bol­ic val­ue, under­de­vel­oped though it is, and so gives us only a few brief scenes of dia­logue-less inter­ac­tion that don’t sig­ni­fy a great deal and tell an instant­ly-for­get­table, bare­ly-there story.

Such is the nature of Men Go to Bat­tle, which sets itself the task of rework­ing a clas­sic genre but has lit­tle more to ped­dle than a few worth­while chuck­les and some vague sug­ges­tions about mas­culin­i­ty-under-siege. You nev­er stop admir­ing the film for its econ­o­my and ambi­tion, but when it comes to actu­al cin­e­mat­ic pow­er, the bat­tle is over before it ever real­ly began.

You might like