Narvik, the review: an honest war film on Netflix

The review of Narvik, a film that traces the homonymous battle fought in Norway in 1940 between the Germans and the British, in a decent package.

At the start of World War II Norway decided to declare itself neutral. Neighboring Sweden supplied 85% of the iron used by the German war industry, with the material being transported by train across the border and shipped to Narvikon Norwegian soil. It was crucial for the British forces to prevent its transportation. On April 8, 1940, the British navy was patrolling Norwegian waters, with allies and Nazis loading iron onto the ships, and in those very hours Norwegian soldiers were sent to Narvik as neutral guards, unaware that their country’s neutrality has already been violated.

Narvik 5 — Narvik: a sequence from the film

As we tell you in the review of Narvikamong them is Corporal Gunnar Tofte, husband and father who ends up falling into enemy hands while his wife Ingrid remained in the city, finding herself given her skills as an interpreter to manage a difficult role of mediation between the two parties in conflict , not knowing who to trust as the town is rocked by bombing…

That last bridge

Narvik 7 — Narvik: a scene from the film

There is no doubt that it is a golden age for war productions that have chosen the catalog as their destination Netflix. If only a few days ago the nine Oscar nominations were made official, including that for best film, of All Quiet on the Western Front, the new adaptation of the novel of the same name by Erich Maria Remarque, in the last few days it has been Narvik, which immediately climbed the rankings of the most viewed titles on the platform. Narvik is also the name of the town which during the Second World War was the tragic stage of a dramatic battle between the Allies and the Nazis, the most important fought on Norwegian soil and considered to be the first defeat suffered by the Fuhrer’s army since the beginning of the hostility. A story that has conquered the national public, breaking the box office and becoming the number 1 release of 2022, precisely because of a well-established page of history in the collective memory of the Scandinavian people.

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A hidden shadow

Narvik 2 2Rcc9O8 — Narvik: A still from the film

And film multifaceted that becomes both slim and multifaceted in a narrative that plays its cards on two distinct plots, which connect in the prologue and in the epilogue. Indeed Narvik focuses alternately on the story of Gunnar, who ended up a prisoner in the hands of the enemy, and on that of his wife Ingrid, grappling with an awkward position that also attracts criticism of being a collaborator, where instead she tried to take care of the best possible way of the little son, being also unaware of the fate of his partner. It is precisely in this partial ambiguity that the main narrative qualities of a screenplay emerge which otherwise relies on fairly classic solutions in the representation of real events, here obviously fictionalized with the creation of suitable characters to involve the viewer from an emotional point of view, with melò implications more or less trodden to peep here and there.

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Even the eye wants its part

Narvik 1 — Narvik: a scene from the historical film

Even without being able to compete with contemporary blockbusters, Narvik can also count on a more than discreet staging, with a couple of highly spectacular situations and all the brutality of the trench warfare in the middle of one of the most tense passages. Underground bunkers shaken by bombs falling on the surface, ships set on fire and bridges to be blown up before the enemy passes: war dynamics are conscious in their reference to “stereotypical” solutions and healthy genre entertainment goes hand in hand with introspective excavation of the protagonists. Let me be clear, the almost two hours of viewing never reach excellence and on several occasions some ingenuity of writing becomes evident, but overall the viewing knows how to entertain with a certain effectiveness, also allowing us to discover one of the page of the Second World War largely unknown to anyone who is not an omnivore fond of war chronicles of the period.

Conclusions

When Norway’s neutrality fails, a young soldier ends up in the hands of the German army while his wife, mother of his child, finds herself forcibly collaborating with the enemy, waiting to learn more about the fate of her beloved and in an attempt to protect the child at all costs. As we told you in the Narvik review, we are faced with a war production of decent workmanship, powerful to count on a pleasantly ambiguous script and decent staging, which also has the merit of leading us to discover one of the least told battles of the Second World War.