MonsterHunter

This has to be my favorite movie about the Crimean War! It certainly leaves all those other movies like um, the, uh, one where those guys were fighting Crimeans or something, in the dust. Obviously, this movie had a giant strike against it as soon as it was mistakenly sent to me (that Crimean family across the street is probably wondering why the heck they got that Complete Planet Of The Apes Television Series DVD set) since it involved a war I had never heard of. I didn’t even know where this Crimea place was. I assumed that it was probably some country in Africa that changed its name every time some new guy took office after the old guy got hacked up or deported to France.

The smart thing then was to do a little research on this place and its little war so that I could better understand the movie. As you might expect, I didn’t actually get around to doing that until after the movie was over which probably lasted longer than the actual war itself. Once I understood the real-life events surrounding the movie, the last part of it made a lot more sense to me (as to who these people were and why they screwed up so badly), but it also made me realize that the movie could have been a lot shorter if they hadn’t been so dang slow in building up to the fateful charge. Surely all this jibber jabber that went on between Captain Nolan (David Hemmings of Deep Red and Barbarella) and the wife (Vanessa Redgrave) of his pal could have been completely eliminated without impacting the whole point of this (that being of course that communication is the key to not getting your ass whipped by the Rooskies).

While the film attempts a half-hearted explanation of the events that take us into the Crimean War through its periodic (and somewhat snarky) animation segments (it was 1968 so you’ve got to expect a little pretentious artiness and social commentary), I didn’t get much more out of it than identifying the countries through the cartoon animals that represented them: Russia was a bear, Britain a lion, Turkey was a turkey wearing a fez (!) and France was a chicken (apparently a whipped, smelly dog would’ve been seen as too offensive despite its accuracy, but I can’t really argue with a chicken either). These cartoons don’t add much to the film, save to pad it out to its epic two hour plus running time and since the actions of the humans in the movie effectively demonstrate the folly of the notion that there is some romance in war, the lions and bears fighting is overkill.

The thing you have to remember about these old time wars and their old time leaders is that these guys were nuts! With no TV or pro sports to keep everyone occupied, the slightest disagreement flared up into years of conflict that embroiled every country in the area, regardless of whether they had any real interest in it. This Crimean thing started because of a fight between Russian and French religious types over issues relating to the Holy Land. Somehow this necessitated that the Russians invade part of the Ottoman Empire (that would be the turkey with the fez). And somehow that action necessitated the British sticking their ugly noses and bad teeth into things.

Though their official line was that they couldn’t contemplate the Russians taking over the Dardanelles since that would affect the British navy’s sea dominance, I think the real reason they got involved was that they were bored. This conflict would be the only big one they would have between the one with France in the early 1800s and the start of World War I a hundred years later. The French joined up since Napoleon III felt like he had something to prove due what his famous uncle had accomplished. The beauty of it all is that this was taking place in the Balkans and the Brits and French managed to kick the Russians out of there in a few months, but then decided they needed to also take over the Russian port city of Sevastopol. That’s where the Crimean War really takes off.

All of that pretty much sets the stage for our movie and if it didn’t make a lick of sense to you, that’s what happens in a world without the United States keeping the lesser countries in check. You get all these Eurotrash countries trying to prove how tough they are in these bizarro conflicts with muddled objectives and causes.

Captain Nolan is in the Light Cavalry headed up by Lord Cardigan. Nolan is a professional soldier through and through and thus is disliked by Cardigan. Nolan doesn’t really help himself out any though pulling stunts like having his Indian servant help him out with the horses, being nice to the horses, and drinking beer from a black bottle in the mess when Lord Cardigan specifically ordered that champagne would be the only drink served that night. And besides, a gentleman decants the beverage of his choice, not just has the bottle sitting there on the table like it’s buck longneck night down at the honkytonk!

Nolan is such a professional soldier that he argues with Cardigan about this and ends up getting himself arrested over the matter. The papers pick this up and it results in Cardigan having “black bottle” shouted at him wherever he goes. Nolan meanwhile is demanding a court martial from Lord Raglan, who is above Cardigan, so that Nolan can have his say on this whole black bottle scandal in particular and on Cardigan’s questionable leadership skills in general. Raglan though is consumed with where the new statue of the Duke of Wellington is going to go because at the present time, it’s sitting right outside his window and is interfering with his ability to do paperwork. This war can’t start soon enough, can it?

Finally, it does start. Nolan is there, apparently under Raglan’s command due to his falling out with Cardigan. Cardigan is there leading his Light Cavalry, but he is underneath Lord Lucan, his hated brother-in-law. Raglan is in charge of everyone, but half the time he thinks he’s fighting the French instead of being allies with them. No one seems terribly concerned that they’re going off to a foreign land to possibly lose their lives and the attitude is probably best expressed early on in the film by a guy who says that there’s no point in doing anything heroic unless someone is there to see it. In this case, there are some wives along for the ride along with a reporter for the Times and they act as if they’re out to see a polo match or something.

The movie shows us an army whose superior officers are out of touch with both reality and one another. The petty jealousies and squabbling between Cardigan and Lucan and the deluded leadership of Raglan all coalesce on one fateful day that sees Cardigan’s Light Cavalry march straight into the Russian army all by themselves. It all starts when the Russians take over British guns left in the field and Raglan seems slow to do anything about it. By the time he sends orders down to the cavalry to have them stop the Russians, the only Russians that the cavalry can see is the main army, not the small group of guys stealing the artillery pieces.

The way the geography was laid out, Raglan and the rest of the leadership were up on a hill and could see everything around them. The cavalry was down in among the valleys and only had a limited view of what was happening around them. When Nolan delivers the message to Lucan and Cardigan, everyone looks around and Nolan points at the only Russians anyone can see which turns out to be about a billion of them. There’s a little concern that they are being ordered to ride straight at that large a group, but an order is an order so…CHARGE!

Lots of carnage follows and you get a good ten minutes of action with lots of guys dying, horses falling down, cannons going off, and dust flying everywhere. Needless to say, Cardigan’s Light Cavalry is annihilated. The movie concludes with Lucan, Raglan, and Cardigan all seeking to put the blame on anyone but themselves, again evidencing the abysmal lack of leadership that caused all this in the first place.

Maybe this movie had some extra cachet when it came out in 1968 because of the Vietnam War and therefore was seen as something of a commentary on the stupidity of the old guard that loved to get everyone into wars, but watching it now, it doesn’t really play much beyond its historical story. The satire that’s present in this is rather restrained and quite minimal. There are a few moments that are funny or ironic, but much of the movie is played as a straight drama, complete with the almost affair between David Hemmings and Vanessa Redgrave.

The entire first part of the movie doesn’t actually lead to anything going on in the second part of the movie, other than show that Cardigan was a jerk and that Raglan was a boob. They were dopes, but the disaster that befell the Light Brigade didn’t necessarily follow from that since it was more along the lines of a gigantic misunderstanding. If I was blaming someone, I’d blame Nolan. He got the order and delivered it. Why wasn’t he sure of what he was supposed to be doing?

In fact, I fail to see how this culture of “war as glamorous endeavor fought by gentleman” played much of a part in the ill-fated charge. Poor lines of communication just so happened to coincide with some bad positioning and the next thing you know you’re the subject of a Tennyson poem! Still, the battle scenes were well down with lots of extras and impressive looking panoramic shots and gory scenes of violence. A decent historical drama that seems far too interested in making a political point that isn’t really there for the making. And they don’t even bother to tell you that Britain eventually won the war (more or less).

© 2008 MonsterHunter