ATLANTIS (2019)

After a five-minute one-shot prologue (four soldiers finish off and bury a wounded enemy sniper), distanced by heat-capture surveillance imagery but still pretty grim stuff, Valentyn Vasyanovych’s award-winning Ukrainian film cuts to a barren landscape and this startling graphic: 2025 EASTERN UKRAINE one year after the war.  It sets up a quotidian look at how even wars won leave a terrible residue (physical/psychological) of aftereffects on land & participants (soldiers, volunteers, civilians).  Often played in static one-shot takes, though moving the camera when that’s called for, we begin by following two vets unable to adjust to post-war life.  One won’t make it.  The other joins an outfit working to deactivate military ordnance (especially mines) and to find, identify and properly bag, tag & bury corpses in various states of decomposition.  In the film’s most memorable scene, a static one-take wonder of a shot, the volunteer converts the ‘mouth’ of a damaged earth digger into an improvised bathtub.  It's followed by a disturbing return to an early scene of target practice, now reconfigured into a shadow play.  Hard as this sounds to watch, it’s also compelling and deeply humanistic.  There’s even a bit of personal hope for the volunteer with the woman who recruited him, though probably none for the contaminated land they are working.  The final shot, with a return to heat imagery, intensely moving.  It brings you back to that opening date:: 2025 EASTERN UKRAINE one year after the war.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Not a real match, but Miklós Jancsó’s nihilistic war film classic CSILLAGOSOK, KATONAK / THE RED AND THE WHITE/’68 lines up with this film.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/01/csillagosok-katonak-red-and-white-1968.html