Castle Keep (Widescreen Edition) (2004) Review

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(More customer reviews)As I saw this film and Midnight Clear again recently, I thought about Stanley Weintraub's book Silent Night in which he discusses a brief period prior to Christmas in 1914, on the battlefields of Flanders, when German and British soldiers spontaneously agreed to declare a truce and suspend fighting, thereby defying their commanding officers. Centuries ago, knights and their attendants would work with their enemies to clear a field for combat the next day. Such cooperation had an obvious practical value. That's not what interests Weintraub as he examines a temporary truce during one of the bloodiest wars ever fought. It had little (if any) practical or tactical value but it did (and does) suggest a human need which transcends military obligations. However, war is war. After a brief respite, the carnage inevitably resumes.
Directed by Sydney Pollack and based on William Eastlake's novel, it stars Burt Lancaster (Major Abraham Falconer), Patrick O'Neal (as Captain Lionel Beckman), and Peter Falk (as Sergeant Orlando Rossi). They and their five associates are in Belgium during the winter of 1944 when they seek some R&R in the 10th century castle of Count Henri Tixier and his wife, Countess Therese. The Count is impotent and desperate for his wife to produce a male heir. Falconer is an obvious candidate to help the Count achieve his objective. Meanwhile, the war in Europe continues, of course, but the castle keeps them safe from its dangers and deprivations.
While seeing this film the first time and then again recently, I felt as if I were dreaming that I had returned to the 1940s in a time machine, to Belgium near the end of World War Two. Credit Henri Decae's cinematography with creating an uncommonly beautiful setting within which savage combat eventually occurs, reminiscent of John Mathieson's visually stunning camera work during the "Hell Unleashed" sequence early in Gladiator. This is a haunting film, at times an exquisitely lovely film. Certain scenes caused me to think that I was hallucinating.
It now occurs to me that perhaps (just perhaps) Castle Keep portrays a group of men at war, not as they really were nor as war really was at a given time but as those men would remember it decades later, had all of them survived and eventually shared their memories of the castle and surrounding area. That is about as close as I have come (thus far) to understanding certain surrealistic moments in the film. Castle Keep deserves more attention than it has received.
Hopefully it will soon be available in DVD format, accompanied by special features will include as much discussion of it as is already available or can be generated. I fondly recall the "Movies in Time" series on the History cable television channel, hosted by Sander Vanocur, which featured films such as Saving Private Ryan. Before, during, and then following each screening, Vanocur and his guests would discuss the film. How much I wish there were a recorded interview out there, somewhere, during which Pollack, Decae, Lancaster, Falk, and others associated with Castle Keep share their thoughts and feelings about its meaning and significance.

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