Beneath Hill 60

Oliver Woodward is a mining engineer in Australia. While the First World War is going on he is taken into the army, but not sent to the front with a rifle; his work is underground. On the western front both sides are digging tunnels: to get under the enemy line, place explosives and blow it up. The other side is digging at the same time and the two teams listen to each other underground. If a sound is heard, the digging stops. Woodward's unit is guarding a device prepared under a hill over years and has to wait there until the order to fire comes. Jeremy Sims directs. Brendan Cowell plays Woodward. It is an Australian production. The events behind the narrative are real: tunnel warfare was carried on along the western front and the detonation of 1917 was among the largest planned explosions of the war. Woodward's own diaries are among the sources and the production states this. The tension the narrative builds is not combat but silence; making no sound in the tunnel is the condition of survival and the film gives that through sound design. The underground scenes were shot in narrow spaces and the sense of enclosure is the film's strongest side. The narrative runs on two times; his life in Australia and the days at the front alternate, and those sections are weaker. This side of the war has rarely been treated in cinema and much of the film's value comes from that. Who it is for: viewers who like films about the First World War and narratives built on technical detail. Who it is not for: the flashbacks break the pace, the characters are thinly written, and the ending is heavy.