Burial

Cinema has trained us to expect the worst in some situations. A septuagenarian woman (Harriet Walter) settling down for the night in her quiet suburban home with her little dog, who seems a bit off-colour. A young man in a wolf mask sneaking into the house. This situation does not play out the way the audience, or the young man, expect.

The woman is Anna, but there was a time when she was known as Brana and lived a very different life, working as a translator in the Soviet military. As her story unfolds, with Charlotte Vega playing her younger incarnation, we learn about a secret mission which saw her unit charged with bringing the remains of Adolf Hitler back from Germany during the dying days of World War Two, so that Stalin could look upon the face of his enemy and the world could have proof of the Nazi führer’s death.

The dying days of World War Two were some of its most vicious, and the film reflects this, with desperate partisans and former soldiers joining the Werewolf movement and killing whatever perceived enemies they could. Rape was also a common method of inducing terror. It’s addressed here in a manner which focuses on the impact rather than the act, and with an interesting twist which emphasises that it’s something which happens with soldiers more generally, not confined to one side. Brana’s own unit struggles to maintain discipline in chaotic surroundings, and her own survival ends up depending on an alliance with a man who has been ostracised by all sides.

Then and now, Brana seems to be one of very few people who see the big picture, and there’s a sense that she feels some relief in talking to the young intruder because she believes that with a bat of help, he can see it too – though she is not so naïve as to think that he can be redeemed. He’s a member of a movement which she always knew might persist after the war – fanatics who discount the (substantial) evidence of Hitler’s death and persist in believing that he somehow outwitted the Allies and prepared to rise again (like an apocalyptic cult, this movement has come up with ever more elaborate explanations for the uprising being delayed). It’s because of people like him that she committed herself to the mission – which is, in essence, the same as Ben Parker’s mission in making this film: to ensure that people understand that Hitler lost, that his ideology was rejected and defeated.

Although it screened at Frightfest, this is not a horror film in the conventional sense, but a take on real world horrors whose alternate history element (in reality Hitler’s remains were burned) plays only a minor role. In this case, however, realism means some pretty gruesome scenes, with the damage bullets do shown much more starkly than in most films set in the modern age. That Parker is working on a low budget with a small cast is not really a problem given the guerrilla nature of the fighting at that stage, with small but vicious skirmishes no longer about soldier versus soldier but, all too often, taking in the local peasants as well. It’s an antidote to the heroic myths which neo-Nazis have tried to build up around the Werewolf movement, and accords well with historical records of the period.

Vega and Walter are both very good and, between them, build up a convincing portrait of a woman who has lived through more than one traumatic era without sacrificing her principles. The depth of character in the film lends it gravity, and it’s considerably more impressive than the run of the mill World War Two horror hybrids of which we get several each year. Catch it if you can.

Burial opens on 2 September in the US and will be available on digital worldwide from 26 September