World War I Doctor Drama Premieres at Venice 5

The war is far away, but ever so close, in Battleground (Campo di Battaglia), director Gianni Amelio’s sober study of doctors treating wounded soldiers in Italy as World War I comes to a close. Reducing the conflict to a chamber piece where a trio of former medical students clash over the moral repercussions of their duties, the film raises some interesting and altogether timely questions, but never builds into a powerful drama.

Set almost entirely in a military hospital miles from the front, Battleground fitfully conveys the utter horrors of the Great War, revealing the deep physical and psychological injuries of soldiers arriving on stretchers for treatment. Many of them are in fact so shell-shocked (what we now call PTSD) that they’re willing to further harm themselves in order to avoid getting sent back to the front, where they are sure to die.

The patients triaged and treated by a pair of dedicated military doctors with opposing moral viewpoints. On one side is Captain Stefano (Gabriel Montesi), the well-connected son of a powerful family who believes his duty is to aid the war effort by sending soldiers back to battle as soon as possible. And on the other side there’s Lieutenant Giulio (Alessandro Borghi), who’s from a modest background and clearly more compassionate. Unbeknownst to the medical staff, he secretly assists the already wounded by injuring them further, blinding them or amputating body parts so they can avoid redeployment.

The two physicians have been friends since med school and the conflict between them is brewing, although it takes Stefano a long time to figure out that Giulio is the one committing treason by helping soldiers escape the front. This is one of the more dubious plot points in the script by Amelio and regular co-writer Alberto Taraglio: The hospital they work in isn’t very big and there don’t seem to be many other doctors, so who else could be helping hurt soldiers escape their duties but Giulio? Another weak element is the character of Anna (Federica Rosellini), a former student who comes to work with them as a nurse, and who gets caught up in both a moral quandary and love triangle.

The rote scripting and direction undercut what could have been a more potent study of WWI’s innumerable victims, a few of whom feature prominently in the early stages of the film. In fact, some of the young men, who hail from Sicily and other impoverished parts of Italy, are livelier and more fascinating than the two stiff physicians, who are so buttoned-up that they’re rather dull to watch.

Amelio made some good movies in the ’90s, including The Stolen Children and Lamerica, but his latest has the whiff of a well-intentioned telefilm. The lensing feels generally flat and the tension never rises above a low boil, even if the dilemmas faced by the doctors — caught between duty and humanitarianism, between saving a life and mutilating a live body to do so — are certainly intriguing.  

It’s during the last act that Battleground takes on a different resonance, when the first victims of the 1918 Spanish flu begin to arrive at the hospital with severe coughs and fever. Soon, the young aren’t dying from gunshots and mortar fire, but from a disease that’s spiraling out of control. The doctors and nurses all start wearing masks, and you don’t need a booster of the Modena or Pfizer vaccine to be reminded of the recent pandemic.

Amelio uses the surging epidemic to bring all three protagonists together again, shifting locations to a morose quarantine facility where Giulio has basically been sentenced to die. The closing scenes offer little hope that things will improve for him or anyone else around him, and we all know how WWI ended: with even more mass deaths due to an unstoppable flu that lasted for roughly two years. There’s no chance for victory at the end of Battleground, but at least the brave Giulio put up a good fight.