Monday, March 23, 2015
The Wipers Times (2013)
THE WIPERS TIMES (2013) ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
D: Andy De Emmony
Ben Chaplin, Julian Rhind-Tutt, Steve Oram,
Michael Palin, Ben Daniels, Josh O'Connor,
Jarrod Cooke, Colm Ash, Hugh Skinner
British troops dodging bullets in Belgium and France during the Great War uncover a printing press and use it to publish their own satirical trench newspaper. A case study in narrative compression, a 90-minute movie in which nothing seems wasted and puns and jokes punctuate the script the way artillery fire punctuates the background soundtrack. That's no accident, and in fact, it's a big part of what the movie's about: the way humor in any form helps keep men in battle from going insane. Michael Palin's well cast as a sympathetic general who (unlike some of his junior officers) both reads the paper and gets the joke. Produced for British television.