Land of Mine

Land of Mine is a thrilling tragedy about the aftermath of war. It's about the war that goes on after the war is over -- the continuing hatred and violence. 
      The first note is laboured breathing against a black screen; we’ll rarely breathe easily for the duration. In scene after scene we wait for the explosion. Some explosions are mines, some emotional. They are equally destructive.

The film is based on the Allies’ historical use of German POWs, including young boy soldiers, to dig out and defuse the thousands of land mines that the German army had planted along the Danish coast to prevent an Allies’ landing.  

Though the forced deployment of boys is clearly inhumane, it was a logical way to deal with the Germans’ mines. As the German army grew dependent upon young recruits, so did this effort to restore the safety of the beaches. Though these boys may not have committed the atrocities of the war, they were still functioning enemy soldiers so their deployment seemed not entirely unjust. But the Geneva Convention came to forbid using POWs for such risky work. And children are not judged as adults, especially when they are coerced into adult crimes. Here we only gradually learn that the soldiers in question are but boys. 

The film’s central thrust is Danish Sgt. Rasmussen’s recovery of his humanity. In the opening scene he proves a hard-headed brutal officer with a seething hatred of the Germans. We don’t get his backstory, nor that of the isolated Danish farm woman who rents the unit her shed for sleeping. Presumably widowed by the war, she delights in seeing some Germans killed, even these innocent youths. 

Rasmussen’s harsh treatment of the boys softens as he witnesses their efforts  and suffering. He countermands the Allies’ willingness to starve them. A night visit by Allied officers to humiliate them deepens his sympathy for the boys and his doubts about the victors’ virtue.

Theoretical virtue is challenged by a personal loss. When Rasmussen lowers his guard and gives his charges a day off for pleasure and play, his dog’s death by mine revives his former hatred. And his dehumanizing of his enemy, as he makes one act like his dog. Had she not lost her husband the woman might have responded more warmly to the boys, as she does when two retrieve her little daughter from the minefield.

Rasmussen ultimately disobeys his orders when he drives the four surviving boys to the border back home to Germany. At whatever cost to his career, he disobeyed his commander’s order to send them back into even more dangerous action — despite the personal promise to send them home after the initial mission.

That’s where the literal mines resonate into metaphor. Whatever hatreds lead into a war, larger ones linger on after it. The hatred of the enemy lingers buried in the mind like a mine in the sand, capable of eruption at any time. 

The film’s lesson is our need to remember our enemy’s humanity — if we are to recover our own, often perforce numbed by the exigencies of war. The Allied officers here demonstrate the inhumanity and cruelty they ostensibly fought to defeat. We know the Allies were more moral than the Axis in World War II. The Allied officers here fail the moral challenge once the war is over — and their hatred and cruelty persist. 
     The film’s specifics remain as current as the metaphoric function of the mine. That is, the film is as literally true about current wars as about that one. Troops still plant mines and unleash horrendous weapons with fatal after effects. Nations -- and governments -- still punish their former enemies with excessive zeal. And some unscrupulous armies still weaponize their own children, using them as shields or as bombs, confident that their deaths will be blamed on their enemies instead.