War Requiem: Rating: 2.5 stars

An interesting, but ultimately ineffective, experiment.

War Requiem (1989)
1989 · UR · Drama
Reviewed July 3, 2009

In theory, this sounds entirely like my kind of thing: a requiem (check) which sets Wilfred Owen's war poems (check) to music (check), overlaid with visual tableaus featuring the horrors of war (check) and starring a brilliant cast that includes Laurence Olivier (check), Tilda Swinton (check), and Nathaniel Parker (CHECK CHECK CHECK CHE— crap, now I need new panties). I am a sucker for anything involving good music, grim moods, great poetry, and hot guys in World War One uniforms, so sign me the hell up and let's get this Mass on the road.

Only… it wasn't really very good. The music was not to my taste; it was not exactly bad, but it was the kind of self-consciously complicated and meandering tunelessness that lodges in the mind, not in the heart. Wilfred Owen's lyrics, so beautiful and heartbreaking in their simplicity and candor, were lost beneath the music, and the film didn't provide subtitles, so I was left to guess from the tableaus which poem was being performed. What is the point of setting poetry to music if you can't even hear the words?

The tableaus, too, proved curiously ineffective. Nothing wrong with the acting — Tilda Swinton is always brilliant, and Nathaniel Parker was both fully committed and lickably gorgeous — but allegories do prove tiresome after an hour or so, and there was nothing new in the usual war-is-hell melodrama. Again, though, I can't stress enough how good (and good-looking — WELL IT IS FRIGGIN' TRUE) Nathaniel Parker is; I wish he'd played Wilfred Owen in a speaking role, since he was perfectly suited physically and talent-wise for the part. He has some good scenes in this, but they never strike deeply enough. The most effective sequence doesn't involve any of the actors at all, but is instead a montage of grisly war footage from across the 20th century.

I still think that Owen's poems would make for an excellent Requiem, but this just wasn't quite up to par. It's only worth it for Nathaniel Parker fans.