This is an old story, about young
soldiers in a foreign, inhospitable land, but Dutch director Shariff Korver’s
tense, stripped down tale, shows that it bears another telling. (Review by Patrick
Compton)
Do Not Hesitate is one of the films on the forthcoming European Film Festival in South Africa which goes hybrid for its 9th edition between October 13 and 23, 2022.
This is an old story, about young soldiers in a foreign, inhospitable land, but Dutch director Shariff Korver’s tense, stripped down tale, shows that it bears another telling.
The film begins with its main character, a happy, confident Erik (Joes Brauers), fit and stripped to the waist, knocking hell out of his drum kit at his parents’ home. This is, we are meant to feel, his natural state of being.
Suddenly, he is part of a Dutch component of a UN peace-keeping force in the middle-east. The truck in which he is travelling breaks down and Erik is one of a number of soldiers ordered to wait until helicopters arrive to carry it away.
The helicopters are delayed and the soldiers are left alone in the mountainous, rugged landscape.
The tension is ratcheted up. There is security alert in the region and every sound seems to spell danger for the soldiers. One of the soldiers shoots at a bush and accidentally kills a goat. A young shepherd boy comes to claim him but, after receiving his compensation, refuses to retire gratefully into the mountains. Instead he remains, a constant, irritating reminder to the soldiers of the bigger reality in which they are trapped.
As the delay lengthens, the soldiers’ sense of alienation intensifies. What, after all, are they doing there? And what are they going to do about this shepherd boy who constantly spews his hatred of them? The climax, as we might expect, is violent, tragic and damaging.
Jolein Laarman’s script does not elucidate the particulars of the peace-keeping mission, or the country concerned. It doesn’t need to. This is an example of a universal condition in which young foreign soldiers grapple with the alien “other”. Except, of course, that they themselves are the aliens.
Brauers is excellent as the initially sympathetic soldier who tries to sympathise with the shepherd, not understanding the depths of hatred that confront him. And Omar Alwan is a potent, glowering presence as the shepherd. – Patrick Compton
The European Film Festival 2022 is screened
online and runs from October 13 to 23, with all movies screened for free. There
are also some showings in cinemas in Cape Town and Johannesburg. For more
information, click on the Festival logo to the right of this article or visit
www.eurofilmfest.co.za
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