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Reviews of Recent Independent, Foreign, & Documentary Films in Theaters and DVD/Home Video
LAST LETTERS FROM MONTE ROSA Allegedly based on 50-year-old correspondence found on a former frontline, Last Letters from Monte Rosa finds an uneasy coalition of Italian and German soldiers gearing up for a final stand against the allies in Northern Italy—in some cases, not too far from where some grew up. That last point is painfully emphasized in the most successful section of the movie when the Axis soldiers are beset by anti-fascist partisans—local hunters and farmers gone guerilla in the name of their country. They taunt the soldiers from the sidelines and appear out of the forest with no warning, killing the Germans and leaving the Italians to desert. (They wouldn’t shoot their countrymen, after all.) As it turns out, the partisans cause the platoons more difficulty than the Allies’ bombs—maybe even more so, given the rift they create between the Italian soldiers, exempt from the partisan attacks, and the German occupiers who are left to dodge bullets alone. For a solid half-hour the film seems headed for a thoughtful meditation on the fight for a nation’s soul.
It’s just one of many anecdotes that Monte Rosa
flits between, unable to settle on any one subject or tone even after
the device of the recited letters is abandoned. The result is less like
the sweeping WWII epics of the past few decades and more like an
unusually dour episode of Band of Brothers—which, in its way, is
quite an accomplishment for a film with such a low budget. The film
cycles through plenty of modes—from the horror of mass grave digging to
the light comedy of the brawls between the Italian and German troops—but
it never lingers on one for very long. It’s more interested in general
experience than specific themes. The surprise attacks by Italian
partisans generate some thrilling paranoia, but despite the end-of-days
setting, the film never sustains the kind of dread that might have
pushed it to more visceral heights. Russell
Brandom
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