The Red Meadows
Written by Andreas Babiolakis
This review is a part of the Palme d’Or Project: a review of every single Palme d’Or winner at Cannes Film Festival. This is a Grand Prix winner: what the Palme d’Or was originally called before 1955. The Red Meadows won for the 1946 festival and was tied with ten other films.
The film was selected by the following jury.
Jury President: Georges Huisman.
Jury: Iris Barry, Beaulieu, Antonin Brousil, J.H.J. De Jong, Don Tudor, Samuel Findlater, Sergei Gerasimov, Jan Korngold, Domingos Mascarenhas, Hugo Mauerhofer, Filippo Mennini, Moltke-Hansen, Fernand Rigot, Kjell Stromberg, Rodolfo Usigli, Youssef Wahby, Helge Wamberg.
Of the war films that won the Grand Prix in 1946 (and there are quite a few), The Red Meadows stands as perhaps the most unique artistically. If anything, that is the bread and butter of this film more than anything. In this feature by Bodil Ipsen and Lau Lauritzen, we follow the recollections of Michael Lans: a Danish partisan arrested for going against Germany and due to be executed. He reflects on his former life, as well as the path that lead him to this very point: his part of a resistance against Germany during World War II. We follow the narrative meandering towards the "present" that Michael finds himself in, and the continuous torture he has to endure before he is to be killed. However, he is not alone in his dreams to make an escape, as to continue to live and also to rebel against Nazi Germany at least one last time.
The story is interesting enough, but I found the aesthetic qualities to outshine the story here: as if placing us in Michael's shoes and cell was the stronger experience. We get transported to these events, via Michael's memory (thus placing us within a bit of a creative space lighting and angle wise) and his harrowing "current" predicaments. Not everything is up to snuff here, as there seems some editing hiccups do get in the way (interrupting both artistic and narrative flows), and I don't think we get quite into the literary complexities that at least the first half of the film calls for. We get quite a divided feature as a result: a recap of what happened before we started watching, and then what feels like the stronger half of the film (the endurance of torture and will to escape). It is the artistic high and passionate filmmaking that make the first half work as well as it does, but the second half's story picks up some of the slack.
The Red Meadows has two different stories in each of its halves, and yet they all relate to the same major narrative. It definitely feels like multiple works, for better or for worse.
And yet it is this escape that feels almost more surreal (or within Michael's mind) than the actual memories he walks us through, and I do find that this is at least somewhat stirring, albeit strange. It's as if what transpires in the present is a hope and a desire from a man still stuck in a German prison and counting down the days before he is put out of his misery. I don't think this is that kind of film, though. I do feel like The Red Meadows maybe got carried away with the creative and emotional elements in its second half, but not to the point of feeling like a low point: it just feels “off”. Still, The Red Meadows reads like a tale told by someone running out of breath because they need to get the words out: there is at least a ton of passion and heart that went into this. The effort cannot be ignored. Neither can the lopsidedness of The Red Meadows, but I do think that the love here for the survivors of war outweighs the cinematic missteps.
Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Toronto Metropolitan University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.