TORONTO: “Passchendaele” (***)

Let’s face it, we all wanted it to be the great Canadian film we have been waiting for for so long, the one that would become mainstream enough to make its mark on the box office charts and enjoy some praise from critics around North America. We wanted “Passchendaele” to be the great Canadian film that was also popular with mass audiences in the manner of Steven Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan.”

And it’s a rare occurrence.  Two examples leap to mind.  “The Sweet Hereafter,” Atom Egoyan’s 1997 masterpiece, was the last universally acclaimed work of cinematic art out of this country, while “The Barbarian Invasions” took home an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.

Paul Gross, a bona fide stud of a Canadian movie star (but no Spielberg) has wanted to make “Passchendaele” since listening to the stories his grandfather used to tell him. The $21 million dollars he was given to start production was unheard of for a Canadian film, but to his credit every penny is up there on the screen. His recreation of the period is quite stunning, capturing the very essence of a small Canadian town circa 1917.

Gross catapults his audience back to the muddy fields of the First World War, where soldiers sat and slept in cold, wet and muddy trenches, the smell and sights of death all around them, awaiting the enemy’s advance, awaiting hell to escape from the bowels of the earth. His work at the helm in these sequences is flawless, and though all war films are forever compared to what Spielberg accomplished in the summer of 1998, this was a very different war.  It was one lacking the technologies we had by the 1940s, a much more brutal and unforgiving conflict with almost barbaric weaponry. I mean, Jesus, bayonets?  Gas? Rocks? Whatever they could hit with or throw.

Gross portrays Michael, a war hero discharged from the Canadian military with shell shock, which a nasty recruiter labels as cowardice.  He is sent to Alberta to convince young men to go to war. The problem is he does not want other young men going through the hell he went through. Very quickly he and the arrogant recruiter lock horns and become bitter enemies.

Where the movie falls apart is in the love story between Michael and a pretty young nurse, Sarah (Caroline Dhavernas), who helps him recover.  She carries some nasty baggage.  It seems her father went to war as well, but fought for the other side, which makes her an outcast in the small town in which they live.

Labeled a “hun,” Sarah’s home painted and violated, she cannot understand why Michael would possibly want to fall in love with her…but he does. Further complicating matters is her addiction to morphine to ease the pain of dealing with the legacy her father left her in death. Michael sees beyond this and finds the warm person underneath, not believing she is, as she states, “broken.”

Sarah’s younger brother David (Joe Dinicol) is unable to go to war as he is asthmatic, but a crafty doctor decides to allow him passage, which Sarah believes to be Michael’s doing. Enraged, Michael follows David back to war where he vows to be the boy’s protector. Only too late does Sarah realize she was wrong about him.

Where we really have to take a leap of faith is to believe, as we did in “The Deer Hunter,” that these three characters could end up in the same place in Europe at the same time, but they do. Sarah is a nurse; having found no work in Canada she volunteered for the war effort. She has long forgiven Michael and admits freely her love for him.

But a massive battle looms, the infamous battle of Passchendaele, one of the most savage battles ever fought in Canadian history. Will Michael’s fighting skills keep young David, now a terrified little boy, safe?  And will he be able to keep his solemn promise to Sarah not to lose his life?

It is in the battle sequences that Gross soars as a filmmaker, and though his acting in the love story is fine, the tale is all too familiar to audiences. And dare I say a tad, predictable? That is not to say the performances do not make the story work to a degree. Caroline Dhavernas is wonderful as Sarah, and there is a nice chemistry between her and Gross. Joe Dinicol is fine as David, bringing the right amount of youthful arrogance to his early scenes, then melting in Europe under the intense strain of war.

“Passchendaele” is not the great Canadian work we hoped it would be, but it still is a damned fine movie that we have every right to be proud of. And judging by the applause that rained down in the Roy Thomson Hall at the film’s conclusion last night…we are.  Mr. Gross has done us right in making a strong film about our heritage, our history, at a time when many of the veterans who fought these battles are gone. We owe it to their memory never to forget their sacrifice and films such as this, masterpieces or not, should be celebrated for what they are.