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The Forgotten Battle

143 statements
27 feature instances
5 referencing feature instances

The Forgotten Battle	type	TVTItem
The Forgotten Battle	label	The Forgotten Battle
The Forgotten Battle	page	TheForgottenBattle
The Forgotten Battle	comment	The Forgotten Battle (De Slag om de Schelde) is a 2020 Dutch World War II movie, directed by Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. It depicts the 1944 Battle of the Scheldt, and in particular the Battle of Walcheren Causeway, a hard-fought action in which an Allied (mostly Canadian) force eventually managed to overcome an entrenched German force on Walcheren Island. The action is seen mostly from three points of view; Teuntje Visser (Susan Radder), a young Dutch woman who becomes rather unwillingly involved in the Resistance, William Sinclair (Jamie Flatters), a British pilot whose troop-carrying glider is shot down in the area on its way to the Battle of Arnhem, and Marinus van Staveren (Gijs Blom), a young Dutchman who previously volunteered to fight with the Germans on the Russian front, but who has now been posted back to Holland after being wounded.Although the film engages in the usual movie fictionalisations and simplifications, it is definitely Based on a True Story; the Battle of the Scheldt was crucial to the Western Allies' invasion of Germany, as victory gave them control of the approaches to the port of Antwerp, through which the armies advancing into Germany could be kept supplied. Nonetheless, this battle is relatively little-known in the rest of the world, which explains the English-language title of the film; in Holland, where the history remains better known, the movie's title is De Slag om de Schelde, meaning simply "The Battle of the Scheldt".The three characters move through the events of the battle, but only come into contact with each other occasionally and briefly, leading to comparisons with the earlier Dunkirk from 2017, which has a similar structure. However, the similarity is fairly loose. The film had its premiere in Holland in December 2020, but its theatrical release was eventually postponed to June 2021 due to the COVID epidemic. It was subsequently released internationally on Netflix.Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy from the Harry Potter films) appears as William's commanding officer, Captain Turner.
The Forgotten Battle	fetched	2023-07-08T19:45:23Z
The Forgotten Battle	parsed	2023-07-08T19:45:23Z
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The Forgotten Battle / int_34dd5f3	type	La RÃ©sistance
The Forgotten Battle / int_34dd5f3	comment	La Résistance: The Dutch Resistance in the Walcheren area is a small group of young men and women with limited resources. Although Teuntje initially hopes that they might the sort of Resistance who could help her brother escape from the Germans, their activities are mostly limited to cautious spying. However, this actually proves crucial, as the information which they are able to get to the Allies across the river enables them to get a small force across by boat, outflank the German positions, and win the day.
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The Forgotten Battle / int_40cc0c7e	type	Bittersweet Ending
The Forgotten Battle / int_40cc0c7e	comment	Bittersweet Ending: The Allies win the battle, liberating the island and taking control of the approaches to Antwerp, which enables them to advance into Germany, while at least two of the film's protagonists survive. However, Teuntje's brother and several of her friends are dead, William's cocky idealism has taken a thorough battering and many of his friends are dead or maimed, and Marinus appears to be dead — and if he somehow survives, he hasn't got much to look forward to as a collaborator in liberated Holland.
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The Forgotten Battle / int_424c9a9b	type	Cold-Blooded Torture
The Forgotten Battle / int_424c9a9b	comment	Cold-Blooded Torture: The Germans are fully willing to use torture on members of the Resistance — especially the officer playing Torture Technician, who is a thoroughly Smug Snake about it.
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The Forgotten Battle / int_4b316d47	type	Break the Cutie
The Forgotten Battle / int_4b316d47	comment	Break the Cutie: William starts the film as an inexperienced, overconfident, but not unlikable trainee, Teuntje is a well-meaning young civilian who is mostly trying to keep her head down and look after her family in an occupied country, and even Marinus, though a collaborator and a battle-scarred soldier, has preserved some of his illusions. In the course of the film, William discovers just how bad war can be, Teuntje loses her brother, sees some of his friends die, and is nearly raped, and Marinus, having been reassigned to what should be safe desk work, is forced to recognise just how brutally the Germans are acting towards his fellow-countrymen, who regard him with contempt, and ends up once more back in combat and eventually apparently mortally wounded. Not surprisingly, they all look at least close to breaking by the end.
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The Forgotten Battle / int_581f6468	type	Hero of Another Story
The Forgotten Battle / int_581f6468	comment	Hero of Another Story: The film frequently shows that, in the vast chaos of the war, everyone is the hero or villain of some story somewhere; the three main protagonists simply provide our viewpoint of these particular events. Notably, the force of which William is initially a part is on its way to Arnhem — so had he not been shot down, William would have been a background character in the classic war movie, A Bridge Too Far.
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The Forgotten Battle / int_6d332aea	type	Driven to Suicide
The Forgotten Battle / int_6d332aea	comment	Driven to Suicide: The German officer who befriends Marinus in hospital early in the film has seen too much of what his side is doing on the Eastern Front, and refuses to ignore or forget it. He does Marinus the favour of arranging him a desk job, then shoots himself.
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The Forgotten Battle / int_6eb4e408	type	Artistic License â€“ Military
The Forgotten Battle / int_6eb4e408	comment	Artistic License – Military: When William reaches the Allied lines, we see no sign of him being debriefed, his story being verified, or anyone attempting to contact his unit. Instead, he’s given a new uniform and joins the infantry for the attack on the German fortifications. Some of that stuff could have happened off-screen, but it all seems very casual. The Waco glider could hold up to thirteen troopers in addition to the pilots. William's glider seemingly only accommodates three. A glider with that few men onboard would at least have been carrying a jeep or an anti-tank gun.
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The Forgotten Battle / int_745a226c	type	Easy Logistics
The Forgotten Battle / int_745a226c	comment	Easy Logistics: A major Aversion of this trope is the basis of this film's plot, as is explained at the beginning. The Western Allies will need massive quantities of supplies and reliable reinforcements to advance into Germany, and have captured Antwerp, one of the few reasonably intact major ports in Northern Europe at the time, to enable this. But the Germans still control the approaches to the port, which is why the Allies have to take this ground at almost any cost.
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The Forgotten Battle / int_768ae1c9	type	Les Collaborateurs
The Forgotten Battle / int_768ae1c9	comment	Les Collaborateurs: Marinus starts out collaborating with the Germans, presumably out of misplaced anti-communist idealism; he becomes increasingly disaffected with them as the film goes on, but by then he has extreme difficulty in getting away. Teuntje's father is seen as a collaborator by other Dutch people because he is prepared to work with the Germans, but he is actually an idealistic doctor who is struggling with a moral determination to provide treatment to anyone who needs it.
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The Forgotten Battle / int_7969f21e	type	No One Gets Left Behind
The Forgotten Battle / int_7969f21e	comment	No One Gets Left Behind: The other pilot from William’s glider is wounded and has to be carried as the troops seek to evade the German forces. This makes for an increasingly impossible situation, but William refuses to consider abandoning him.
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The Forgotten Battle / int_863fa679	type	What Happened to the Mouse?
The Forgotten Battle / int_863fa679	comment	What Happened to the Mouse?: The other survivors from William's glider give up trying to get back home and just... fade into the scenery? It's a minor instance of the trope as they were never fully developed characters, but what they do, or hope to do, is never explained. They abandoned Captain Turner (and those loyal to him) because he was slowing them down, and stole their only map, so it's likely they planned to make their own way back to their lines, but neither their intentions nor their fate are made explicit.
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The Forgotten Battle / int_8a817c2a	type	Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil
The Forgotten Battle / int_8a817c2a	comment	Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: The event that pushes Marinus over the edge into violently opposing the Germans at any cost at the end of the film is when he realises one of them is about to rape Teuntje.
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The Forgotten Battle / int_8acf3a97	type	Spreading Disaster Map Graphic
The Forgotten Battle / int_8acf3a97	comment	Spreading Disaster Map Graphic: Inverted, as a map of Europe, complete with little flags showing which army is where, shows the area of German control shrinking in summer 1944 as their fronts collapse in both east (Operation Bagration) and west (the breakout from Normandy and liberation of France).
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The Forgotten Battle / int_8d0785d5	type	Didn't Think This Through
The Forgotten Battle / int_8d0785d5	comment	Didn't Think This Through: The three British paratroopers who, for whatever reason, choose to give up rather than carry on. Their only chance of survival now is to disappear forever with no hope of ever going home. If they're captured by the Germans, they'll be sent to a POW camp. If they're recovered by the Allies, they may be shot for desertion. And if they do go to a prison camp, they'll likely still face the consequences of their actions anyway when the Allies come and liberate them. Though with only William to give evidence against them (assuming he survives the war), and given the general confusion of wartime, they may have a chance of surviving.
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The Forgotten Battle / int_95b7c400	type	Faux Affably Evil
The Forgotten Battle / int_95b7c400	comment	Faux Affably Evil: The German commander is quite pleasant to Teuntje's father when he comes to plead for mercy for his son, but Teuntje sees this as mockery, and he orders torture and summary executions with no hesitation or visible remorse.
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The Forgotten Battle / int_9dfb8296	type	This Is Gonna Suck
The Forgotten Battle / int_9dfb8296	comment	This Is Gonna Suck: The Allied troops realise that they can only take the north bank of the river by advancing along the narrow road across a dam, which has been too badly damaged to allow vehicular traffic, in the face of fire from well-entrenched German defenders who will be ready for them. Everybody accepts that the job has to be done, but nobody is at all happy about it. The first day goes just as badly as expected, but then the information supplied by the Dutch Resistance enables them to insert a force behind the German fortifications.
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The Forgotten Battle / int_a90fff3	type	Based on a True Story
The Forgotten Battle / int_a90fff3	comment	Based on a True Story: The real Battle of the Scheldt was a complex, drawn-out affair, and the protagonists of the film are fictional. Nonetheless, the battle did happen, and did involve bloody fighting against entrenched German defenders, including an attack across that dam and amphibious attacks.
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The Forgotten Battle / int_acecb17d	type	Chekhov's Skill
The Forgotten Battle / int_acecb17d	comment	Chekhov's Skill: In his first scene, William is shown in training, and puts his glider into a roll — a dangerous manoeuvre for which his commanding officer chews him out. Nonetheless, he uses it to save his glider when it is damaged by enemy fire. It's the one time his brash overconfidence seems justified, though.
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The Forgotten Battle / int_c3c18143	type	Hope Spot
The Forgotten Battle / int_c3c18143	comment	Hope Spot: The whole town gets a hope spot early in the film when the Germans withdraw, leaving them with the sense that they are now free. However, a slight shift in the tide of battle brings the Germans back a day or two later, and the town becomes the scene of a brutal battle before it is actually liberated.
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The Forgotten Battle / int_ca7ec334	type	Two Lines, No Waiting
The Forgotten Battle / int_ca7ec334	comment	Two Lines, No Waiting: Three lines, in this case; the stories of the three protagonists are given equal weight, and they only occasionally and briefly intersect.
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The Forgotten Battle / int_d5a674ff	type	Defiant Stone Throw
The Forgotten Battle / int_d5a674ff	comment	Defiant Stone Throw: Played with and subverted. When the Germans are withdrawing from the town early in the film, an angry and defiant Dirk (Teuntje's brother) throws a rock at one of their trucks. This has disproportionate consequences, as it breaks the windscreen and stuns the driver, and the truck veers off the road and into some of the marching infantry; it later emerges that three of the Germans were killed. Dirk initially escapes the angry Germans, but when they return to the town shortly afterwards, they set out to hunt him down, threatening to execute hostages if he doesn't surrender. The initial minor act of defiance ultimately costs Dirk his life and leads to the capture and execution of several other Resistance members, and doesn't actually impress anyone much.
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The Forgotten Battle / int_ddb8ba26	type	Shot at Dawn
The Forgotten Battle / int_ddb8ba26	comment	Shot at Dawn: In a bleakly uncomplicated instance of the trope, the Germans execute Dirk (Teuntje’s brother) and other (believed) members of the Resistance by firing squad.
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The Forgotten Battle / int_ea7e3be8	type	Dramatic Gun Cock
The Forgotten Battle / int_ea7e3be8	comment	Dramatic Gun Cock: When William is pursuing Marinus through the marshes, the latter shows that he has the former outflanked by the click of a pistol being cocked. As it turns out, neither is willing to kill the other in cold blood.
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The Forgotten Battle / int_ed05cfee	type	NaÃ¯ve Newcomer
The Forgotten Battle / int_ed05cfee	comment	Naïve Newcomer: William starts the film as a brash, overconfident young trainee glider pilot, and is one of the viewpoint protagonists; we see the problems of the flooded terrain and the violence of infantry combat through his eyes.
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The Forgotten Battle / int_f1492605	type	Redemption Equals Death
The Forgotten Battle / int_f1492605	comment	Redemption Equals Death: Marinus is not only a collaborator, but one who has fought alongside the Germans against the Russians. His plot arc in the film is one of increasing disillusion, until he takes a bullet in the chest saving Teuntje at the end.
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The Forgotten Battle / int_f1d6144a	type	War Is Hell
The Forgotten Battle / int_f1d6144a	comment	War Is Hell: The film's battle scenes are chaotic and brutal, leaving a lot of characters bloody, maimed, or dead — and the survivors are frequently visibly traumatised.
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The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.

The Forgotten Battle	hasFeature	Defiant Stone Throw / int_4f443fbb
The Forgotten Battle	hasFeature	Dutch Films / int_4f443fbb
The Forgotten Battle	hasFeature	Films of the 2020s / int_4f443fbb
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The Forgotten Battle	hasFeature	Two Lines, No Waiting / int_4f443fbb

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