David WatsonIt’s 1944, World War Two is raging, and, in an isolated Welsh valley, farmer’s wife Sarah (Andrea Riseborough) wakes up to find her husband, and most of the men in the village, missing.
It’s 1944,
World War Two is raging, and, in an isolated Welsh valley, farmer’s wife Sarah
(Andrea Riseborough) wakes up to find her husband, and most of the men in the
village, missing.
The Nazis have landed and the men have taken to the hills to fight,
leaving the women, and their farms, defenceless while the mysterious Mr Atkins
(Michael Sheen) recruits teenager
George (Iwan Rheon) into his
underground army of saboteurs and resistance fighters.
As the women wait for their husbands to return and struggle
to keep their farming community functioning, radio broadcasts keep them
informed of the progress of the war, news of battles lost in London, Manchester
and Birmingham. When the Germans,
under Captain Albrecht (Tom Wlaschiha)
finally arrive, it’s almost a relief for the women. Garrisoned for the winter in the valley, they’ve been tasked
by the SS with finding a priceless artefact. But, haunted by their experiences, for Albrecht and his
battle-weary men the valley is a harsh but idyllic escape from the war.
Despite facing open hostility, the soldiers slowly break
down the women’s defences, ingratiating their way into the community, bonding
with the women while George studies the invaders, watching, waiting. Finding themselves increasingly drawn
together by their mutual loneliness, Sarah and Albrecht slowly enter into a
tentative relationship but, when George’s actions result in tragedy, Sarah is
driven to commit her own shocking act of resistance…
Beautifully, hypnotically shot and glacially slow, Resistance is a very British slice of
that science fiction staple, the alternate history. Echoing Philip K.
Dick’s masterpiece The Man In The
High Castle and Robert Harris’ Fatherland by positing a world where
D-Day fails and the Nazis have occupied the UK, Resistance is a somber, moody, minimalist piece concerned less with
action movie clichés or even something so pedestrian as a dramatic arc than
with creating a mood of numbed dread, focusing instead on character and
emotion, the confusion, the loneliness and the weariness of its central
characters. Nothing much happens
in Resistance and what does happen
is slower than treacle running uphill but there’s a cloying sense of impending
doom throughout, a stifling, suffocating feeling of claustrophobia.
Boasting universally good performances from its ensemble
cast, particularly Welsh character actress Sharon
Morgan, the standouts are Iwon Rheon’s (E4’s Misfits) conflicted George as the young saboteur spying on his
neighbours and an almost inscrutable turn from Andrea Riseborough as the
strong, self-reliant yet lonely and vulnerable Sarah. Subtle and powerful, Riseborough’s stripped-to-the-bone
performance proves yet again that she’s one of the more interesting young
actresses at work in the UK today.
While Michael Sheen’s resistance leader seems to have wandered in from a
less thoughtful, more exciting (and probably more enjoyable) film, Tom Wlaschiha is also excellent as
Albrecht, a fundamentally decent man trying to protect both his men and the women,
all of whom are as scared, vulnerable and as lonely as each other.
Slow, measured and cerebral, Resistance ultimately is just too restrained to satisfy but it’s a
thought-provoking study of war and it’s costs.
