It's an unearthly environment, filmed in a washed-out palette of dead grays, dirty whites, and blood. Under the cold sun, Zandvliet conjures a new image of hell as the boys squirm on the sand, tinkering with death.
The story doesn't go where you might expect and the imagery is startling. That's what they're told.ĭirector Martin Zandvliet has created both a classic war film and a powerful anti-war statement. When the boys complete their task, they will be sent home. Untrained and despondent, they unearth the mines one by one, pulling out the delicate firing pins with hands shaking from fatigue and starvation. By day, they crawl on their bellies through the sand, poking ahead for the deadly mines. By night, the starving POWs are locked in abandoned barracks. On a cold and barren beach, fourteen boys are put under the command of Sergeant Carl Rasmussen, a tough and bitter Danish officer worn to the bone from the winds of war. What were they thinking? This film does not need a pun in its title. For some goddamn reason, the film has been retitled Land of Mine for its limited U.S. This largely forgotten episode of World War II history is dramatized in the Danish film Under Sandet ( Under the Sand), nominated for an Academy Award and generally acknowledged as among the finest Danish films of the last several years.
The final wave of German soldiers sent to Denmark were mostly teenagers-children, essentially-conscripted by Hitler in a cruel last gasp. By then, most of the original occupying forces were dead or gone. Germany believed that the Danish shore was one of the probable landing spots for an Allied invasion.Īfter Germany's surrender, Danish officials commandeered four thousand German POWs to remove the landmines. In the final months of World War II, German forces buried more than 1.5 million landmines on the western beaches of Denmark.