Over here in the Netherlands you still hear, more than 60 years after the second world war, news about unexploded bombs being found while digging. When I was young (end of the eighties probably) I remember we had to stay at my grandmothers place during one weekend as a bomb was found quite near to our house and it needed to be defused. I can still remember seeing a drawing of the blast radius of that bomb and had it gone off it would have had a huge impact on the area. It is hard to imagine how many bombs were used during that war. The beaches in Denmark were carpeted with two million landmines, protecting the German army from an invasion from sea. After the war though these mines needed to be removed and what the Danish did, was use German soldiers to do so. Land of Mine tells the story of a group of young soldiers who are forced to do this extremely dangerous job.
The movie opens with the group of young German men, most of them not even having reached twenty, who are receiving a short training by the Danish on how to defuse the german landmines. At the start they will get a slap on their fingers during practising to let them know they aren’t careful enough and would have died, but it doesn’t take long before they all have to walk into a bunker with a real mine to take out its mechanism. It’s an insanely tense scene as one soldier after another walks into the bunker to do for real what they have been practising. As you are watching this you feel your body tense up and know something could go wrong any moment, the adrenaline pumping through you body and not disappearing until the movie has finished.
You pretty much care for these young men from the start, who ended up in a bad place just because they happen to be German. They are treated like dirt by most people, but dream about a better existence. They are told they can return to Germany once they are done clearing the beach, but when you are doing this kind of work, sometimes without being fed or a map with the location of the mines, the risks of not surviving it keep growing.
The Danish officer responsible for this group doesn’t spare them, even though he is aware he is working with people. It makes his relationship with these boys special. Besides the strong bond between the men the relationship with the officer forms the heart of the film. When accidents occur it will shake you to your core. In a fascinating way it brings this part of history to life. Landmines are unpredictable and that makes Land of Mine a film which won’t make you feel comfortable for a second.
