The gleaming fantasy. The dutiful biopic. The unnerving tragedy. Try as they might, movies are often doomed to
predictability by the codes of their chosen genres—codes that we absorb like succulent,
cinema-adoring sponges. But John
Boorman’s “Queen and Country,” somehow, defies any pattern. At first, it is a playful comedy. Yet gradually, the bantering mischief is
tainted. Egos are burnished, engagements
are broken, and innocence, finally, is lost.
We are in the realm of the military. The Korean War is afoot and in England, so
too is the draft. And so we follow Bill
Rohan (Callum Turner) and Percy Hapgood (Caleb Landry Jones) as they enter a
regiment of slob soldiers run by the ferociously disdainful Sergeant Bradley
(David Thewlis).
Bill and Percy make a farce of it all. Considered too moronic for active duty,
they’re assigned to teach typing lessons, during which they instruct they’re
young charges to slouch and repeatedly type the phrase “all good boys deserve
sex.” It’s a gag; the war is on, but our
heroes greet it a sly smirk. Bill smiles
knowingly as he lectures his students, at once pleased with himself for having
escaped the horrors of combat and conscious of how ridiculous his mundane role
in the army really is.
And yet the mischief can’t last. A mysterious woman (Tasmin Egerton),
immaculately dressed in a blue coat, beguiles Bill, then breaks his spirit; and
as the story unfolds, Bill and Percy find themselves increasingly furious with
Bradley (when criticizing them isn’t enough, he nastily rips into Percy’s
girlfriend). Bradley, though, is just a
symptom of his regiment, where silly antics and slithering corruption march
side by side.
How did I feel after watching “Queen and Country”? Mostly sad.
This is a beautifully told story; it’s clean and clear like a classic
Hollywood drama, yet something about its rhythm takes you aback, keeps you from
armoring up against bitter emotional aftertaste. That is why in the end, the fates of the
characters—rejection, prison, insanity—left me feeling that even for the ones
that do emerge unscathed, something has been irrevocably lost.
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