Roberto Minervini is a filmmaker whose previous works—including “Stop the Pounding Heart” (2013), “The Other Side” (2015) and “What You Gonna Do When the World’s on Fire” (2018)—have often seen him combining the elements of narrative and documentary cinema to tell his stories in a manner that stresses realism over artifice. That is certainly the case with his latest project, “The Damned,” a Civil War-set saga designed to suggest what might have resulted if a documentary crew had been sent back in time to capture the activities of a squad going about the business of trying not to die. Some viewers may find this approach interesting, but Miniervi’s near-total eschewing of conventional dramatic or character development may leave others feeling as isolated and cold as the soldiers on the screen.
In the winter of 1862, a small Union army squad is sent to scout out the Montana Territory, an alternately bleak and beautiful landscape that might also be laden with gold. Although all of the soldiers in this particular unit are volunteers, none appear to be particularly gung-ho towards the idea of fighting—the most able member of the group (Jeremiah Knupp) admits that he enlisted purely for the paycheck. In contrast, the two brothers (Tim and Noah Carlson), the group’s youngest members, reveal that they joined partly to follow in their father’s footsteps and partly because of their strong religious beliefs. However, as their journey westward continues, they become increasingly frustrated with participating in a war they may not even believe in.
Most of the time, their journey is filled with the kind of ordinary day-to-day tedium one might expect to encounter in such a journey. Some of the soldiers go out to hunt and butcher various forms of wildlife in order to replenish their dwindling stocks, while others do what they can to help the newcomers prepare for the chaos of battle. We see them doing laundry, patrolling the woods, and playing cards. However, while their days are largely uneventful, there is always a sense of unease and danger in the air, as if things could erupt into violence and chaos in an instant. Roughly halfway through, this finally happens when the squad is fired upon by an unseen enemy that leaves a few of them dead and the rest divided as to what their next move should be.
Calling “The Damned” a war movie is somewhat akin to calling Kelly Reichardt’s great “Meek’s Cutoff” (2012) a Western: Both statements might be true in the broad sense but neither one indulges in the kind of bold, blood-and-thunder action that one typically associates with those genres, ostensibly to give viewers a suggestion of what it might have really been like to be in those situations back them without the romanticizing. As was the case with “Meek’s Cutoff,” “The Damned” does a good job of putting us in the shoes of the soldiers as they go about the business of trying to stay alive. The atmosphere created by Minervini and cinematographer Carlos Alfonso Corra (who also composed the offbeat and interesting score) is convincing throughout—you can actually begin to feel the cold in your bones as the soldiers move further north. And during the big battle set piece in the middle, he is quite good at establishing the fear and panic as they try to fight off an opponent that they cannot even see, as bullets fly all around them.
The difference is that while “Meek’s Cutoff” managed to still include a compelling story and engaging characters in addition to stressing the realities of the situation, “The Damned” never quite gets there. Minervini makes the curious choice to visually isolate his characters, even when marching as a group, so that we never get a real sense of the camaraderie or tensions that might have developed among the members over the course of their journey. When the soldiers (played by a cast made up mostly of non-actors) do speak about their inner feelings and motivations, it is mostly via monologues consisting of the kind of philosophical musings that one might expect to hear in a Terrence Malick film. Unfortunately, those musings don’t really build to anything profound or meaningful in the end, other than to remind viewers that warfare is largely a dull, brutal, and meaningless example of the worst aspects of mankind.
What “The Damned” does, it does very well. And if you are interested in the day-to-day realities of life during the Civil War, you will find it fascinating and certainly closer to what really happened than most depictions that Hollywood has cranked out over the years. While I appreciated all of that, I suppose, I also wanted a little more—something that would allow me to see the characters as more than faceless, nameless ciphers constantly being framed in soft-focus close-ups meant to highlight their existential despair. As a formal exercise, “The Damned’ is not without interest. But it lacks the detail, nuance, and character that might have made it into something more.
