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James Wilby, John Neville, Jonathan Pryce, Jonny Lee Miller, Stuart Bunce

This extraordinary World War I film concerns themes of heroism, sacrifice, duty, and self-knowledge as profound as any in Saving Private Ryan. The story, taken from Pat Barker's 1991 novel Regeneratio...( read more  read more... )n and based on true events, is set in a British Army hospital in Craiglockart, Scotland, in 1917. There, a pioneering psychiatrist named Dr. William Rivers (Jonathan Pryce) works with shell-shocked soldiers in a gentle, humane manner that contrasts sharply with the brutality of his colleagues. (The film's most horrifying scene features a mute patient being forced to speak by means of electric shock.)

Among Rivers's patients is a mute, amnesiac officer named Billy Prior (Jonny Lee Miller), as well as the emotionally depleted poet Wilfred Owen (Stuart Bunce) and another poet and war hero, Siegfried Sassoon (James Wilby). Unlike the others, Sassoon is not, in fact, suffering from any disorder but is being quietly punished for writing a pamphlet denouncing the war. The army hopes Rivers can find some basis for mental incompetency in Sassoon, but the thoughtful doctor instead attempts to persuade him to add legitimacy to his criticisms of the war by returning to active duty.

Pryce brilliantly captures the cumulative effects of Rivers's responsibility--of fixing men and sending them back to their possible deaths--on the good doctor's nerves. Wilby is also fine as Sassoon, but the film belongs just as much to actors Miller and Bunce, whose characters are different kinds of men struggling to find their balance, one through a revived sense of duty and the other through his writing. Scottish filmmaker Gillies Mackinnon (The Playboys) is at the top of his form, telling a unique story about the invisible wounds of war while shedding light on the meeting of two visionary poets and one visionary physician. --Tom Keogh

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54% liked it

1,044 ratings

R, 96 min.

Directed by: Gillies MacKinnon

Release Date: November 1, 1999

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DVD Release Date: April 22, 2003

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Flixster Reviews (29)

  • garebearsgirl
    September 16, 2008
    garebearsgirl
    One of my favorite war films of all time. No one has ever really heard of it, but I think it really shows the horrors of war and what brave men who decide to fight go through. Plus, it tells the story of one of my favorite war poets, Wilfred Owen....his work is amazing!!
  • bbcfloridabound
    July 8, 2009
    bbcfloridabound
    Behind the Lines aka : Regeneration . This Movie is from the 1997 Toronto Film Festival. Its a war movie that shows how bad conditions were in World War I, and what the soldiers had to go thru back in hospitals to get straighten out. Main character in this one is a poet who is an...( read more) officer who in the end goes back to front lines. Its Ok not one of the best from the film festival. 3 1/2 stars best I can do.
  • bdmc7199
    February 3, 2007
    bdmc7199
    Love History and love Pryce. Gotta see this.
  • micc98
    January 29, 2007
    micc98
    A WWI movie? count me in

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Behind the Lines Trivia

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