Smoke and stench and toy soldiers' fear

Atop the mound of bodies a morbid battle standard flutters in teh wind: a leafless tree, the corpse of a soldier skewered onto it. We see in time-lapse how rain and then snow descends on the bodies, and how the human mountain is blanketed with a layer of mud. With each jump in time a smaller version of the soldier’s corpse hangs in the tree. Eaten away by the vultures.

In the shelter of the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the First World War is being brought to life in a small auditorium in the Rotterdam City Theater. And although it is being brought to the big screen, it is without the millions available to a Steven Spielberg. ‘Live animation’ is what the members of the Hotel Modern-company call their medium. Like children playing with toy soldiers, they rush around with miniature tanks and uniformed puppets. The battlefield is a table covered with a layer of sand, where a bunch of parsley plays the part of a tree, and an upturned brush, dens thickets.

It is a horrific film. In a child’s wargame, no more damage is done by an explosion than a fallen plastic doll. On their battlefield, the makers of The Great War show the battlefield from the perspective of a soldier in the trenches of the First World War. In extracts from authentic wartime correspondence, read aloud, soldiers tell of the fumes and the stench, the fear and the blinding. Through the spyhole of a tank you see the panic of the wounded in its path. Stumbling through glutinous mud in the pitch darkness you feel the resilience of the corpse of a brother-in-arms.

Puppets have a hard time of it in the hands of these theater makers: gas burners, stink bombs and watering cans all make their appearance, along with the radio-play sound effects of foley artist Arthur Sauer. By blowing a whistle he creates the sqauwk of the vulture visiting the mound of corpses at the end of the performance. The paper vulture circles, attached to the end of a stick. And the switching of the body is performed by the giant hands of the puppeteers. The audience chuckles at their morbid inventiveness as they summon up these horrific scenes, but is also deeply impressed by the ‘realism’ as the toy soldiers transform into rotting cannon fodder.

3-2-2001