Die Brücke

Still going through movies I recorded months ago and am trying to watch to clear up some space on the DVR, I recently got around to watching The Bridge.

The setting is late in World War II, in a small town somewhere in western Germany. A group of seven high school boys of about 16 is discussing what they know about the latest American advance and whether the war is going to go straight through their town in a big way, or just give them a glancing blow. In any case they expect that they're going to get a call-up because the Nazi army needs soldiers badly.

Of course, the war is already lost and calling up such young kids is pointless, something their English teacher knows. He tries to tell the local military commander in the mildest terms possible, because even at this late date in the war to say such a thing is heresy and the Nazis would consider it treasonous.

Still, the war hasn't come quite yet, and the boys are able to enjoy another day of about as close to being happy-go-lucky as you can get when your country is being defeated in a war. Some of them have practical war-related problems, such as their mothers trying to get them sent to farmer relatives in the hopes the kids can be classified as farm labor and kept out of the war. Others have more personal family problems; with parents missing, dead, or separated, the old farts still have physical needs and the kids aren't quite ready for that.

With all that's going on around them, however, the boys all seem willing to do whatever they consider their part to help the fatherland in what they don't seem to realize is going to be a doomed effort. They all get their call-ups, and one of them even goes to the barracks in the middle of the night to get away from his overbearing father.

The boys get about one day's worth of training before the Americans are close enough that the whole platoon has to go off to fight. At this point, at least one officer has a bit of humanity, pointing out that the teens are so green that they might even be a hindrance, so worse than useless. With that, the idea is hatched to have them defend the local bridge in town, until the demolitions crew can get in to blow it up. After all, the bridge is considered relatively unimportant and the Americans might not send much this way. So one sergeant is left behind with the boys, who excitedly set out to defend their bridge.

Of course, in the fog of war, things don't work out as planned. The sergeant goes off to perform some duty, but not having any official orders, is considered a deserter by a patrol he runs into; not being able to prove himself, he's summarily shot by the patrol. And then a few American tanks do come....

The Bridge is an excellent little movie, humanizing the horror of war in a way that most Hollywood movies aren't able to do. You can't help but develop an attachment to these teenaged boys who have no idea what they're getting themselves into, and think that it's a salutary thing. The German military isn't necessarily evil here, making decisions that seem rational but just go wrong, while the child soldiers make plausible mistakes too. That fact that we get to know the boys well before the actual war part of the movie comes is also a huge plus.

The Bridge has been released to DVD on a pricey Criterion Collection disc. If it shows up on TCM Imports again, I can strongly recommend it.