Campo di Battaglia (Battlefield) | 2024 Venice Film Festival Review

Down with the Sickness: Amelio Probes Wartime Ethical Dilemmas

The tagline for Battlefield, the latest from Italian auteur Gianni Amelio, could very well read “You gotta be cruel to be kind,” seeing as it turns on complex ethical dilemmas between two diametrically opposed physicians working side by side in a military hospital in the twilight of WWI. Loosely based on the 2018 novel The Challenge by Carlo Patriarca, it’s a narrative which features Amelio’s significant interests in humans whose experiences are incredibly hobbled either by social expectations or reality, where vestiges of authentic humanity are relegated to the outskirts of society. It’s also another period piece dealing with social vulnerabilities like his 2023 title Lord of the Ants, an Oscar Wilde-ish narrative about a successful artist whose career is hobbled thanks to the accusations of his younger lover’s father.

His latest is more about dueling ideals about nationalism and sacrifice, juxtaposing friends and colleagues who are representatives of opposing schools of thought on a physician’s role during war time. Does the ‘first do no harm’ phrase in the Hippocratic oath take a back seat in the repairing of human bodies so they can sacrifice themselves on the front line? Or can this statement be reinterpreted to allow for further harm if it allows for the preservation of life? Such is the quandary explored by two men who are unwittingly faced with another kind of scourge on the horizon.

Stefano (Gabriel Montesi) and Giulio (Alessandro Borghi) are childhood friends now working as doctors in a military hospital. It’s 1918, during the waning days of the war. Most of the soldiers they’re treating suffer from self-inflicted wounds as a way to escape the battlefield. Stefano sees this as traitorous, discharging patients even as blood drips from the wounds of their own making. Secretly, Giulio takes many of these soldiers into his private lab at the hospital where he makes their wounds worse to the extent they cannot possibly return to the front lines. Sometimes, however, there’s irreversible damage thanks to his intervention, though the soldiers seem to prefer anything but returning to war. Anna (Federica Rossellini), a nurse with the Red Cross who knew both men when they were all at university together, sides with Stefano’s ideals about the soldiers. When Giulio’s actions are discovered, his relationship to Stefano and Anna is compromised, as well as his professional integrity. But then, suddenly, a dangerous flu begins to decimate not only the soldiers but the local populace. As the war ends, another battle just begins, forcing the doctors to reassess their motivations.

Among several notable differences from the source novel is Amelio’s casting of Giulio and Stefano, particularly with the latter, who was written as much less aesthetically pleasing than Gabriel Montesi (whose matinee star looks have found him in a number of high profile Italian productions, such as 2020’s Bad Tales and Marco Bellocchio’s 2022 miniseries, Esterno Notte, (read review). As the more complex and cerebral Giulio, Alessandro Borghi (The Eight Mountains, 2022) pulls focus, a more intriguing personality, partially acting out of rebellion for the role he’s forced to take. As is to be expected, his reputation amongst wounded soldiers eventually blows his cover. Stuck between the two men is Federica Rossellini as Anna, whose allegiance between the brothers oscillates a bit conveniently. Her own talents in the profession are thwarted by her gender, a taken-for-granted element of the period which isn’t explored beyond superficial acknowledgments.

In one of the several situational ironies of Battlefield, the Spanish flu epidemic ends up being the saving grace for Giulio thanks to his interests and knowledge in bacteriology. As this changes the political landscape which would have led to Giulio’s ruin, the decimation of the disease allows him to seize the opportunity to explore his passion for biology. However, the tension built upon his dangerous actions to keep wounded soldiers off the front lines suddenly dissipates, and Amelio descends into old-fashioned flourishes in the third act, ending with statistics about the death tolls brought on by the flu.

What’s curious is how life during this pandemic suddenly seems of exploratory interest following the COVID-19 epidemic a century later, not unlike the satirical Coup! (2023) from Joseph Schuman and Austin Stark, a dark comedy microcosm of social elites on the East Coast. But everything about Battlefield eventually feels a bit muted, as its most interesting elements dealt with the role of medical professionals and the forced sacrifice of ideals beneath the yoke of political expectations.

Reviewed on August 31st at the 2024 Venice Film Festival (81st edition) – In Competition section. 103 Mins.

★★½/☆☆☆☆☆