This is a thoroughly engrossing film which should be judged on its own merit and not in relation to "Pearl Harbour". That U.S. reference is exactly what "Passchendaele" departs from. It creates a deeply moving tension (and not just for Canadians, I suspect) between the homefront with its beauty and sadness and the bloodbath of a war a world away. Gross has the guts to portray what this epic event meant for those Canadians who felt compelled to participate (and hundreds of thousands did) and the personal and collective costs. I was convinced by every storyline and performance.

I dont get the hateIt shows how brutal ww1 was AND IS A GREAT STORY!

Superb Canadian movie

Incredible movie that needs a proper review. Best movie on the horrors of World War I I've ever seen.

The war scenes are very accurate to the time of Passchendaele and the Flanders which was flooded all the time and good acting from everybody involved.War realism is worth th e5 starts. Who wants to sit in a shell filled with water for a couple of days.

I do not see the same film the negative reviews that preceed me see. I see an excellent presentation of the horrors of war. I see a superb feeling for the godawful feeling of killing another man - and not being sure why. I see an accurate depiction of what the amalgamation of class feeling and nationalist hatred does to a population. I saw complete ugliness amongst the classes - and amongst the feelings of the commoners against "the foe". One must recall what Pogo said. "We have met the enemy, and they are us."I have personally seen violence. I have myself met dismemberment and death. I have known the irrational devotion to a cause, that leads one, blindly, into unforeseen consequences. This movie does an excellent job of showing the awfulness of war. And, showing us the why of the awfulness. The plot line is a bit O'Henry-ish, in coincidence and all that. But, the story is much bigger than the plot, and the dialogue. All war is violent. That is its nature. By that very nature, war involves heartbreak and sorrow. This film does an excellent job of reminding us that this is the case. And it does an excellent job of portraying trench warfare in Europe in particular. The story of this film? 3 stars, not more. But the film? At least 4 stars, because it is as good as a documentary at telling us what war is about. I say bravo.

The basis for this movie is the story of the grandfather of the actor, writer, and producer. The battle scenes were executed superbly, and the historical accuracy of the back story is with in the realm of possibility. Every movie fictionalizes dialog and action to move the store along, this one is no different. However, it is historical fiction, not a documentary. It is well acted, directed and the cinematography and editing are tops. One in ten Canadian soldiers did not make it home from France and Belgium. Their bravery and audacity as fighters in the Great War was surpassed only by their ability to endure the elements they were forced to live, fight and die in. This movie can be enjoyed by history buffs looking for a Ken Burns perspective and movie buffs looking for the Stephen Spielberg grandeur and romance.

I thought this film was pretty good. Especially when you read what inspired it

Paul Gross wrote, directed and stars in this ambitious (yet still very CBC feeling) epic, following the exploits of the Canadian soldiers who fought in one of the key battles of World War 1 in 1917. The story follows Gross as a troubled veteran, his nurse girlfriend and a naïve boy who intersect first in Alberta and then through the bloody battle of Passchendaele.You can just tell that Paul Gross put his heart and soul into this and I really, really wanted to be impressed, finally getting the Canadian side of events after so many WW1 movies that just deal with the American or British. Unfortunately though its not great. Yeah it has its moments, it's visually impressive, the battle scenes are very well done, the trench warfare, the mud, the rain, the carnage and I got very caught up in the ending despite myself but this is also melodramatic at times, kinda choppy and (as I said) has a made for TV feel despite the big budget. Guys will be disappointed too because for the most part this is a love story. Still I am haunted by the ending, that final shot of the wooden cross in Calgary with the Bow river in the background infused with the white stone graves in France, beautiful. 11/16/14

Passchendaele is another one of those films that falls under the category of a romance taking place in the midst of a tragedy...type...thing. I don't know if there is a genre like that, but there should be, because there's more than enough movies to give it its own classification. For me, a lot of these films have really been hit or miss, because I often find that the romance and drama between the characters outweighs the significance of the event the story takes place in. Titanic is a great example of this formula working quite well, while Pearl Harbor is an example of just how terrible this formula can be. Now enter Passchendaele. Unlike those other films previously mentioned, Passchendaele is a CANADIAN film revolving around a romance between a soldier and a nurse, while they are caught in the midst of the battle of Passchendaele, a key battle in the First World War in which Canadians played a significant role in. What I think this film does really well is telling a sort of classic romance tale, while also painting an accurate picture of the brutal battle. I thought it tackled both parts of the story pretty well, which is all the more impressive considering the low budget of the film. A sweetly told love story, and a fitting tribute to the Canadian soldiers who gave their lives during the battle of Passchendaele.

I'm not english mother tongue and maybe I did not get all the dialogues but honesty I like it. Maybe the movie, sometimes, is very slow but Gross shows the horror's war efficiently. The battle scene is terrific, modern war turns in medieval war. I think this is a half-war-movie and half-love-movie. This is a piece of canadian history. If you want to see bad fictions on war watch italian tv, trust me I'm italian.

This film is far better that you'd believe from the reviews. The final battle scene is horrific and was hard to watch because of it's authenticity.

One of the advertising lines for this movie about the World War I battle of Passchendaele is that it tells the story of the Canadian soldiers who fought there. Well, not really. It tells the story of one soldier, and most of that story takes place in Calgary where combat veteran Michael Dunne (Paul Gross) is assigned to a recruiting centre after being diagnosed with shell shock. He falls in love with a local nurse. When her younger brother enslists and goes overseas, Dunne asks to be sent with him to look after him. The final 30 minutes involve Dunne and the young man in the title battle.The production values are very good. The battle scenes are convincing (an opening scene of an ambushed patrol is based on the experiences of Gross's own grandfather). There is a tendency for stunt people to go cartwheeling through the air when a shell lands nearby. The acting is good, with particular mention for Caroline Dhavernas as the nurse, Sarah Mann. What held this movie back was the script (which Gross wrote; he also directed and produced). The dialogue is melodramatic and the plot feels forced, especially when Dunne manoeuvres his way back to the front. The climax descends into cliches over-the-top imagery.It's a good effort, but it doesn't compare with Saving Private Ryan or Band of Brothers.

The Canadians Didn't Seem to Know It Couldn't Be Taken If it is true, as several people lament in the making-of, that Canadians no longer know their own history, so much the less do Americans know it. Americans will persist in telling Europeans that, if not for them, British or French or wherever citizens would all be speaking German. However, people who know a bit of the history of the two world wars know that the Americans got to both wars late. After all, in World War II, we had to invade France, because the Germans had completely overrun it. In the First World War, well, it's worth noting that the scene that opens the movie takes place a day or two after the US officially declared war, and we are explicitly told that the Canadians had been fighting for three years at that point. (Less a few months, but who's counting?) What's more, the Canadians were well known to be extremely fierce fighters--by the Allies as well as the Germans. In particular, we are looking here at Sergeant Michael Dunne (Paul Gross), wounded at Vimy Ridge. He is sent back to Canada, where he is diagnosed with what was then called neurasthenia. Instead of going back to the front, he is sent to a recruiting office in his hometown of Calgary. He falls in love with his nurse, Sarah Mann (Caroline Dhavernas), but she has no interest in getting emotionally involved with a soldier. Luckily for Dunne, he is there when Sarah's brother, David (Joe Dinicol), comes in. Unluckily for David, he has asthma, which disqualifies him for service--especially late enough in the war that gas was being used. Besides, Dunne knows that it will just about kill Sarah if David is killed, and he's interested in protecting Sarah. However, David is himself in love with Cassie Walker (Meredith Bailey), whose father (David Ley) is a doctor who doesn't want his only child involved with someone so far below their social class. War is never fun, of course, but it seems to me that World War I was about the worst. In Passchendaele, a combination of months of rain and intense artillery even prevented the use of trenches--the bombing destroyed the drainage, and it was impossible to dig trenches in the sodden ground. Before-and-after pictures are frankly shocking--there is literally nothing left. Roads and buildings alike are completely obliterated. The battle lasted a couple of weeks and gained the Allies less than two miles of ground. Much of the war was like that, fought back and forth over the same ground. No one could properly bury the dead. No one in the film is gassed, but when David says that Dunne isn't blind, he doesn't mean that he didn't lose his eyes to bullets or shell fragments. That was one of the effects of gas. It also left insides scarred. The film reminds us that one in ten Canadians who went to war never returned home, but things weren't all sunshine and roses even for the ones who did. This is not entirely about the battle, as you may have noticed. Arguably, it is very little about the battle. Mostly, it is Paul Gross attempting to connect with his grandfather, a veteran who did not speak much about the war to anyone. Indeed, his character is named after his grandfather, Michael Joseph Dunne. The real Dunne was on a fishing trip with his young grandson once, and he told Paul Gross that, during the war, he had bayoneted a young German boy in the forehead, and that boy had had "eyes like water." This scene appears at the beginning of the movie, and just as the real Dunne was haunted by it, so too it is the real reason for the fictional Dunne's "neurasthenia." Several times, we see those who preach on the "glory of war" receive some clear awareness of what war is really like. Of course, in one case, the guy just gets shot, but that's not uncommon. It is, after all, a war. Though I am giving to understand that the mud killed plenty as Passchendaele, not just the bullets. For all the movie is as much about a man as about a battle, Paul Gross still put a lot of effort into historical accuracy. Strangely, even the claim that the Germans referred to the Canadian Expeditionary Force as stormtroopers is accurate, even if the name is generally believed historically to refer to German troops exclusively. The Germans really did use it to refer to those specific Canadian troops, for reasons that make sense with a bit of historical perspective that I'm not going to go into here. The physical appearance of the battlefield is carefully created. What was once the prairies of Alberta was plowed and soaked and so forth, creating a scene that matches that shown in period photos. Even if the average person doesn't know much about World War I history--and I confess, I do not and had to look up the "stormtrooper" thing--Paul Gross clearly went out of his way to get it as right as possible. He probably knows that you can't give the story a glorious ending, because it wasn't a glorious war.

People yet again miss the point of another great one- yeah it focuses too much on the love story, but I'm a sucker for a good love story- that's where the not very manly part of me comes into play. And the film does have a good message about heroism in war.