EISMAYER (2022)

I suppose there’s got to be a Drill-Sergeant-from-Hell movie every few years to keep the tropes in play and remind us the hoary clichés are still true.  But how to reset, or at least refresh them?  Austrian writer/director David Wager manages with this apparently true story (real-life protagonists shown at the credits) of an ‘out’ gay soldier and the screaming closet case officer who’s terrorizing the newbies into shape over their mandatory six-months stint.  Married with kid (loves the boy/avoids the wife), Gerhard Liebmann’s Lt. Eismayer grows intensely focused within his unit on openly gay/openly obstinate Bosnian recruit Falak (Luja Dimic).  Surprisingly, the harder he comes down on the kid, the more pressure he gets from his superior officer to tone it down.  But a needless accident during training (actually a forced one by Falak on himself) turns Eismayer into something of a public hero; and what had been a fraught relationship winds up opening a window into Eismayer’s repressed self.  A lot of clichés in here, but two things keep it more interesting than you expect.  First, the changing attitudes toward queer culture and a younger generation’s openness about it; and second, the relationship & conversations between Eismayer and his young son.  Additional drama with illness and declarations of love may honestly reflect the facts, but feel crammed into too small a space.  Still, the playing is good enough and a general briskness help cover action when we get ahead of the storyline.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  How things have changed since Marlon Brando longed for a soldier boy over wife Elizabeth Taylor in John Huston’s REFLECTIONS IN A GOLDEN EYE/’67.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/06/reflections-in-golden-eye-1967.html