Into the White: Tense Indie Drama

Into the White is an unusual historical war film which chooses to stray away from the traditional gritty tactical shoot em’ up, focusing instead on the lives of a handful of soldiers who find themselves on different sides in an unlikely scenario. The European-style film set me on edge, as it differs from the American cinematic style I’m accustomed to. At its core the movie is a subdued drama with subtle humor reminiscent of 2001 Academy Award winning foreign film No Man’s Land.

The film is based on the true story of three German Lutwaffe pilots; Leutnant Horst Schopis (Florian Lukas), Unteroffizier Josef Schwartz (David Kross), and Feldwebel Wolfgang Strunk (Stig Henrik Hoff) and two British RAF pilots Captain Charles P. Davenport (Lachlan Nieboer) and Gunner Robert Smith (Rupert Grint) becoming unlikely bedfellows when they shoot each other down over the Norwegian wilderness and are forced to weather out a storm in an abandoned hunting lodge. Over the course of a few days, the tables turn several times in a constant struggle to become the capturer and not the captured. Eventually, the Norwegian wilderness itself is revealed to be the true enemy and the five men must band together to survive the harsh winter storm. 

Writers Ole Meldgaard, Dave Mango, and Peter Naess (Elling, Mozart and the Whale) have crafted a surprisingly funny one-location drama that the indie filmmaker in me is quite envious of. Apart from a few scenes at the end of the film, the entirety of Into the White takes place in the abandoned hunting lodge. Like a tense stage play, the movie has several overlapping conflicts between each of the characters, most of them resulting from successful or failed attempts to capture the others. While Robert and Strunk are out hunting, the currently in-power Charles orders Horst to remove a support beam for firewood. Horst argues it’s a bad idea, but he’s not currently holding the gun. When Horst reluctantly removes the beam, the roof begins to cave and both men are forced to support the collapsing roof themselves while they wait for Robert and Strunk to return and Josef wallows in a sickly comatose state. Seizing his opportunity and risking the roofs collapse, Horst abandons his support and steals back the Luger, to which Charles hysterically replies “Do you think I care about the gun!? Help me!”

The five actors really delivered in this film. So much of the action is character based, that anything less would have made it a disaster. Niebor plays the haughty proper British officer and Grint the pub-crawling darts champion. Countering them is the dynamic of the depressed pilot played by Lukas upset over his marital separation and frequent plane crashes, the young idealist brilliantly played by Kross singing the praises of Hitler through his wounded delirium, and the quiet and mysteriously artistic Hoff, joining the military to avoid taking over his fathers large company. Each plays off the other characterizations, and each has their own set of motives that collide over the course of the film. At one point hilarity ensues, as the four healthy pilots have to trick the injured Josef into getting drunk so that they can amputate his arm with a hatchet. When Josef wakes up and eyeballs the hatchet, Robert is left with no other alternative anesthetic and punches poor Josef in his schnoz to get the desired effect.

Finding a showing of Into the White, even in Metropolitan Los Angeles, was quite difficult. For those of you living in other countries, this film came out last year and you can probably pick a copy up on Blue Ray already. But in all honesty, you should put it on your list of films to rent. It’s not serviced well by the big screen, but is an interesting find for fans of war films and Indie dramas. It’s O Brother Where Art Thou-esque sense of humor and engaging plot twists kept me entertained despite its claustrophobic setting and lack of “American” stars. (Coincidentally it’s a who’s-who of European stars) Into the White easily places itself on my list of highly watchable foreign films.