by Joseph Davis, Contributing Writer
I’ve mentioned several times of my penchant for the Second World War in film. Hell, I’ve written twice on movies set during the war on the Eastern front of Europe in Battle for Sevastopol and Come and See. Now, I’m coming in with yet another movie set in Europe during the Second World War, only this one is from the more well known Western Front, in an area that perhaps few are as familiar with: the liberation of the Netherlands and the Dutch resistance. The movie I’m coming to you with is The Forgotten Battle, a 2020 Dutch war movie I stumbled upon on Netflix, depicting the Battle for the Scheldt in late 1944. This battle might not be as well known as many others in the war, with the likes of Dunkirk, Operation Overlord, or The Battle of the Bulge taking top billing (which is a weird thing to say about warfare), but it might have been just as important, if not more important, to the liberation of Europe.
This movie takes place from three perspectives, so I feel like it’s only right to focus on each one on it’s own. First off, we have Teuntje Visser (Susan Raddler), a young woman in occupied Zeeland, who works for the collaborating mayor of her hometown, whose father is a doctor at the local hospital, and whose brother is an active member of the resistance. She’s ultimately put in a unique position where she’s working for those who assist her countries occupiers and has ambitions of joining the resistance against them, but doesn’t want to put her father at undue risk to do so. As the movie progresses and the Allies draw closer, it becomes impossible for her to remain out of the fray, and she has to make choices for the good of her family and neighbors. This angle of the movie is one of the reasons why I find it captivating — the depiction of civilians who are living under occupation in the late war, waiting for the moment they are liberated, and making the difficult choices to act in defiance of their occupiers. It’s shot beautifully, scripted well, and just hits every point it needs to. You can’t help but feel that every moment happens as you would expect it too, and it creates an air of tension as the film reaches its climax.
The next perspective of this movie I want to dive into is that of Marinus van Stavern, a Dutch volunteer of the German army. Now this is a bold choice on the filmmakers’ part here, and it pays off in my book. It depicts a late-war situation on the losing side of the war, as you see someone who once lived and breathed an ideology grows disillusioned with what he’s been fighting for. As he returns home, he begins to see just how bad the situation is getting, as he interacts with Teuntje and her father at times while working for the general in charge of the area the Germans occupy, and eventually having to fight against allied forces in a losing battle alongside child soldiers. This portion shows just how untenable the German situation was becoming, and the horrors of just how far they had to go to even be able to field an army. Marinus is the antihero of the story in a way, a member of an abhorrent ideology, who grows to realize that the cause he is fighting for is wrong as the world it supports comes crashing down around it.
The final part of this story focuses on Sgt. William Sinclair. Admittedly, this is probably the weakest portion of the movie. Now don’t get me wrong, the story itself is fascinating and works perfectly on its own — it’s of a unit aboard a glider being shot down and having to work their way back to allied lines. It’s well shot, well thought out, and well acted (including by one Tom Felton). However, for me it feels just a bit out of place. It feels like part of the battle itself, yes, but I feel like it could have been done a little better, because otherwise this feels like it could be its own movie and do just as well. It’s still important to have in the film, as it’s exclusion would honestly hurt the movie in the long term, but I kind of wish that they had focused instead on Henk Sneijder, a Free Dutch soldier in his unit, while either retaining the lead up to the final climactic battle or as a member of the main ground forces as a Dutch unit chomping at the bit to liberate his homeland. I don’t even remotely hate the inclusion of this storyline, I just don’t entirely love it either.
Overall, if you’re someone like me who finds historical dramas fascinating, especially those involving war, I would place this movie in the must-see pile. It’s a complex web of different stories and fates all wrapped up into one movie, combining into a conclusion that is fulfilling and satisfying for each. You have great acting, beautiful effects and camerawork, and a compelling world event all wrapped up into one package to remind the world of a battle that was vastly important in the liberation of Western Europe.
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