Page 68 - Coespu Magazine 2017-2

“Greenery Will Bloom Again” is a 2014 Italian anti-war film written and directed by Ermanno
Olmi, and set in the trenches of the
Asiago plateau at the end of World
War I.
A hundred years since the outbreak of
WWI, this film describes Ermanno
Olmi’s vision of a conflict that cost the
lives of 16 million human beings.
Inspired by “The Fear”, a novel
written by Federico de Roberto in
1921, this brief recollection of
moments in a war that was fought
mainly in the trenches, replaces the
sound and fury normally associated
with the genre, focusing instead on the intense fear, loneliness, misery and darkness of soldiers
stuck in their underground fortifications, at the mercy of enemy snipers and of heavy artillery and
never allowed them to stick their noses into the open.
The story unfolds in the space of one night on the north-eastern front, following the last bloody
battles of 1917 on the Asiago
plateau. It’s snowing everywhere
and the Austrian trenches are so
close that you can hear the enemy
soldiers breathing.
Italian soldiers are almost all sick
and exhausted from fighting in
frigid bunkers. Their commander, a
captain, has a raging fever and is
hallucinating.
When a major shows up with new
orders that are both suicidal and
impossible, the captain steps down

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