‘The War Below’ film on Messines

[Martin Bennitt]

My French tv mag this week carries an advert for a DVD of a film entitled in French ‘L’Enfer Sous Terre’ which appears to be about the attack at Messines. Not having heard of it I did a little research but failed to get very far. The English title is ‘The War Below’, it is the first venture by a director called John Watts (no details found) and stars Sam Hazeldine and Tom Goodman-Hill (nothing found in their filmographies either). I assume it’s being released on DVD because cinemas are closed but if anyone knows any more about it I would appreciate it.

 

Cheers Martin B

[jonbem]

Martin

details on IMDB

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10381014/

 

and

https://www.thewarbelow.com/

rgds

Jon

Edited 23 April , 2021 by jonbem

[Martin Bennitt]

Thanks Jon

 

IMDB says it was released in the UK last year but the film site says the trailer isn’t even viewable yet. No indication on the credits who is the technical/historical adviser. No doubt Forum Pals will eventually wade in on it as they did with ‘1917’. 

 

Cheers Martin B

[jonbem]

I guess it does look like "straight to DVD" https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10381014/releaseinfo?ref_=tt_dt_dt#akas

Release Dates

UK	2020
France	21 April 2021	(DVD premiere)
Netherlands	5 May 2021	(DVD premiere)
Russia	20 May 2021

[jonbem]

https://www.screendaily.com/news/sam-hazeldine-to-star-in-first-world-war-drama-100-feet-below-hell-for-amp-international-exclusive/5139348.article?referrer=RSS

but doesn't say much more....

 

although it led me to

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Norton-Griffiths

 

Edited 23 April , 2021 by jonbem

[Martin Bennitt]

See he was also known as Empire Jack but I guess Hellfire Jack rings better these days.

 

The blurb for the DVD says Messines was the biggest explosion in history before   

Hiroshima and Nagasaki but I thought that was Halifax.

 

The handful of reviews on IMDB are generally positive, though.

 

Cheers Martin B

[ypres tommy]

I can’t add much but I can tell you that it was filmed in early 2019 and Taff Gillingham was involved as it was partially filmed at his Trench and used his specialist extras.

[JP Watts]

Hi All,

Sorry for intruding on your thread but I may be able to answer a few questions. At the moment the movie has just been released in France, it is going into cinemas in Russia in May, the rest of the world including US shortly after whilst the distributor in the UK called Vertigo releasing is weighing up whether to send to cinemas or release via digital view on demand. To be honest we never thought the film would be released in cinemas because it is such a small independent movie, our budget was around £600k rather than the many many millions of the average US budget and we shot it all in just 21 days so we shall wait and see. Unfortunately, some cultural cultural-de-sac decided it would be fun to upload a pirated copy to the internet so people have been watching that before it has been released. 

We have based the film itself around one group of Claykickers and tried to create a narrative about what it might have been like for them as well as their family back home. We know there were thousands of tunnellers in reality and we do acknowledge there were lots of teams in the script but for our scope and budget it just wasn’t feasible to film huge amounts of people and so we wanted to keep it focussed and create drama through this small group. Before researching for this project I hadn’t heard of the Claykickers so we really wanted to bring them to people’s awareness. We filmed the tunnel scenes with just candle light and I have to tell you it was a very eery feeling even though we were in just a set. It must have been terrifying down there in real life. 

We did indeed shoot at Taff’s trenches, they are fantastic. I’ve known him many years since I was a participant in the first series of Lad’s Army (before it became that bad lad’s one) Other locations were Beamish and a studio in Suffolk which used to be an old air force base.

Thanks

John   

Edited 26 April , 2021 by JP Watts

[MDPMicahDominicParsons]

Hello everyone, 

 

It is really great to see this film being discussed. I had the privilege of being a specialist extra on the film and I can testify to the huge effort that has been made to bring this subject to life. I cannot wait to see this film in the near future.

 

Best Wishes,

 

Micah Dominic Parsons

[Martin Bennitt]

Thanks very much JP.  You are certainly not intruding. Indeed, welcome to the Forum. As I live in France I can order the DVD from Koba films but I don’t know whether people  in the UK can if it hasn’t been officially released there yet. It certainly seems to be worth looking at.

 

Cheers Martin B

[jonbem]

Hi JP

welcome to the forum

I'm sure there will be plenty of interest from the members

Regards

Jon

[JP Watts]

Thanks Martin,

There is no DVD release yet in the UK. Once Vertigo decides whether it should be released in cinemas they will then schedule a release date for DVD/view on demand in the UK. After that it will go to Netflix or similar.

 

Micah, thanks so much for being part of it, was a total joy to have you all there!

 

Cheers

John

1 minute ago, jonbem said:

Hi JP

welcome to the forum

I'm sure there will be plenty of interest from the members

Regards

Jon

Thanks Jon, much appreciated.

[Marco]

I have my dvd copy on order for a while. Release May 5th in the Netherlands.

 

bol.com | The War Below (Dvd), Sam Hazeldine | Dvd's

[JP Watts]

5 hours ago, Marco said:

I have my dvd copy on order for a while. Release May 5th in the Netherlands.

 

bol.com | The War Below (Dvd), Sam Hazeldine | Dvd's

Thanks Marco, I hope you enjoy it.

[Martin Bennitt]

So can people in the UK legally order the DVD from distributors in France or the Netherlands? The French one can be viewed either in the original or dubbed. It is Pal Zone 2, which may make a technical difference, I wouldn’t know.

 

Cheers Martin B

Edited 26 April , 2021 by Martin Bennitt

[JP Watts]

11 minutes ago, Martin Bennitt said:

So can people in the UK legally order the DVD from distributors in France or the Netherlands? The French one can be viewed either in the original or dubbed. It is Pal Zone 2, which may make a technical difference, I wouldn’t know.

 

Cheers Martin B

Hi Martin,

I guess in theory people could buy it from there as Pal zone 2 can be played in the UK but the price for importing etc may cost more nowadays so I would be slightly wary. Wouldn't want anyone paying over the odds. I should hopefully hear in the next few days what Vertigo are doing with the UK release (whether physical or digital and dates) and will of course let you know. I don't even have a copy myself yet.

 

Cheers

John

[ypres tommy]

I also was a specialist extra for the trench scenes and really enjoyed working with an excellent cast and crew.

As an aside, an old colleague who lives in Cyprus has seen it and privately messaged me on social media to tell me it was excellent and as a story, far better than both Christopher Nolan’s “Dunkirk” and Sam Mendes “1917.”

Make of that what you will!

 

[JP Watts]

4 minutes ago, ypres tommy said:

I also was a specialist extra for the trench scenes and really enjoyed working with an excellent cast and crew.

As an aside, an old colleague who lives in Cyprus has seen it and privately messaged me on social media to tell me it was excellent and as a story, far better than both Christopher Nolan’s “Dunkirk” and Sam Mendes “1917.”

Make of that what you will!

 

Thanks very much for all your hard work that week, it was greatly appreciated by all (even if the food was a bit dodgy at times!! ha ha) and I'm really pleased it was an enjoyable experience for you. 

I'm very pleased they liked it and that's a lovely compliment, thanks for letting me know! We've had some good reviews and a few negative ones but that's completely normal and expected. I understand some of the historical inaccuracies will annoy a few people (such as not censoring letters) but unfortunately, to tell a story in a film sometimes we have to bend it a bit or no one will get what's going on. As the saying goes, you can't ever please everyone. I would always welcome constructive criticism though so any thoughts on how to improve for next time then please do let me know.

Thanks again!

John

[Martin Bennitt]

Just ordered this from Koba Films. Should get it early next week.

 

Cheers Martin B

[JP Watts]

32 minutes ago, Martin Bennitt said:

Just ordered this from Koba Films. Should get it early next week.

 

Cheers Martin B

Thanks Martin, hope you enjoy it!

Cheers

John

[jonbem]

I took a punt and signed up for free trial of Amazon Prime in France, ordered the film, it was delivered in five days, but bu99er, it was a blu-ray. Oops! Je suis un idiot. Cancelled the French "prime" so not to get charged for rolling account. (already have it in UK)

Anyway, searched for a chepish blu=ray player, got a refurb with 12 month warranty from Tesco outlet (I needed to upgrade my very old DVD player  so ok)

Just watched the film. I enjoyed it vey much. Good story, nicely shot, good acting. I thought far better than many other big budget films.

My only real crticism is at the end when Peter puts the toy soldier in front of his fathers photo the BWM & VM with ribbons are there. I don't think they would have been issued then! (not until 1919-1920)

 

[Martin Bennitt]

I received the DVD 10 days ago and have now watched it twice, and left me with mixed feelings. It compares with the Australian movie Beneath Hill 60 in its depiction of the claustrophobic and dangerous conditions the miners faced and the feisty individuals many of them were. The trench scenes above ground were atmospherically also very good, with nothing really to quibble about. However I would have liked to see much more of the actual practice of claykicking, as described for example, in Alexander Barrie's classic account of the tunnelling companies and Norton Griffith's role in their formation, 'The War Underground'. By and large only the results were shown. There were niggles in some of the shots -- the north of England in 1914 must have been a much grimier place than squeaky clean Beamish, where the queue of presumably Yorkshiremen to sign up  failed to mask the offices of a Sunderland newspaper.

John Watts admits that for budgetary reasons they could only concentrate on the activities of a small group, but I think many ordinary viewers might still come away with the impression that just half a dozen men were responsible for causing the biggest conventional explosion in history. I think the character of Norton Griffiths could have been a bit more flamboyant -- a shot of him touring the front in his Rolls-Royce with cases of port in the back for bribing reluctant brigadiers would have been nice, for instance. Andrew Scarborough as the staff colonel is also a bit of a caricature.

For historical purists there is much to criticise, I'm afraid: Norton Griffiths' recruiting drives were mainly in 1914 and 1915. Messines was approved in January 1916, well before the Somme, and soon after that Norton Griffiths was effectively out of it following the formation of an Inspectorate of Mines under Major-General Robert Harvey.

But that is not to take away the fact that this is a good human interest story, tightly written and largely well portrayed. I'm sure everyone had a lot of fun making it.

 

Cheers Martin B

[JP Watts]

Thank you Jonbem and Martin both for your comments. I do agree with some of the criticisms there Martin and if we'd had more time and development we maybe could have incorporated some of that. On our budget and sets somethings were unfortunately not practically possible (eg our underground set only had one small section we could actually dig into which wasn't very deep so we could not get the actual Claykicking shots we had devised in our storyboards) but I do think some of your suggestions like Jack touring etc would have been really nice.

If we ever make another war film I'd certainly come to a forum like this beforehand to discuss things through. We live and learn.

Thanks again for taking the time to watch both and giving feedback, it's much appreciated.

 

Cheers

John 

[JP Watts]

On 12/05/2021 at 19:34, jonbem said:

Anyway, searched for a chepish blu=ray player, got a refurb with 12 month warranty from Tesco outlet

Nightmare jonbem, glad it worked in the end.

[Marco]

On 26/04/2021 at 11:40, Marco said:

I have my dvd copy on order for a while. Release May 5th in the Netherlands.

 

bol.com | The War Below (Dvd), Sam Hazeldine | Dvd's

 

Unfortunately, this sellers informed me that they cannot deliver. Going to look for an other option.