For a Lost Soldier (1992)

Best movie of this year hands down!

The Worst Film Ever

Great Film overall

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

At present times, it's impossible not to not to note the pedophiles connotations of the movie. After all, we have a young but mature soldier making love to a pubescent youth. But is it all? The relationship that develops between them is very sweet, and one couldn't say is not consensual. We know better that gay feelings are preexisting in many boys very early, and he must have felt very solitary before the emergence of the soldier. Our present legislation and morals wouldn't give a chance to the love of the two boys. But is that reasonable? Not for the morals of the film, who presents the relationship of the two as something quite natural. It's a polemic film, that can lead us to think as of present costumes in a dialectic way. Are we correct in judging as bad as we should such a tender relationship, coming out of the terrors of war, and which gave so permanent good feelings to the minor involved?

This film seemed relatively hidden when trying to find it and there is a perfectly good explanation for that. In a way this film feels controversial and rather explicit, but that is what makes this film all the more merrier. However, the tediousness of the first forty-five minutes did get on my nerves a bit, but after that, the story really comes into a full effect play. It's quite a hidden gem this film, though, at the same time it could be considered a tad bit child exploitative.For A Lost Soldier deals with some strong themes and brings some new light to certain topics. However, much more could have been done for the film to really burst onto the big screen.

Parts of this film are weak (the dance studio scenes in particular), and it failed to have much of an impact overall. Despite this, it is worth watching, not only because of the beauty of the soldier, but because of the picturesqueness of the landscape and family life in the protagonist's memory.One strength of the film is the avoidance of stridency. Hollywood films tend to exaggerate everything for dramatic effect, and it's a refreshing change here to be free from that. I particularly liked the stepfather's attitude toward their relationship—that's life. That theme pervades the film, and while it makes it a bit milquetoast, it also avoids the soap opera plus cartoon style Hollywood film-making tone.Someone here wrote:"And yet, the fact that the boy never got over the love of that man suggests the inherent imbalance in that type of relationship. Do you think the soldier went through the rest of his life trying to find the boy?"I'd never get over a guy that beautiful myself, no matter how old I was when I was with him! Actually, when I was about twenty-three, I spent a weekend with a graduate student and he was so gorgeous that I have never completely gotten over him. If had been really young and had been with someone like him, the desire would have probably been even more intense, though. When I was that age of the protagonist in the film, I definitely wished for a relationship and wouldn't have turned down a guy like that solider.

Loosely based on the autobiography of Rudi van Danzi, FOR A LOST SOLIDER tells the story of a Dutch boy's emotional and sexual relationship with a young adult American solider during World War II. The film presents the relationship as a loving and often magical one--and asks the viewer to consider if such relationships are intrinsically abusive or if they might, in extraordinary instances, have validity and even integrity.It should be very obvious that the subject and issues raised are likely to provoke a knee-jerk reaction in most people--but even so, FOR A LOST SOLDIER has remarkable delicacy. The film is not explotational in any way, it is beautifully acted and filmed, and the difficult material is handled by the director, writer, and cinematographer with considerable grace.All of this said, however, the film is so careful to avoid the obvious pitfalls that in some respects it fails to make any significant statement. What ultimately emerges is a memory--the film is presented as an extended flashback--but exactly how that memory reverberates in present time is vaguely expressed at best. And while the film does not consider this particular relationship to be deliberately abusive, it begs but never answers the question of intrinsic abusive, leaving the viewer to do battle with that knotty issue entirely on their own.Those who watch FOR A LOST SOLIDER thoughtfully and with an open mind will find it forces them to define their own ideas about what is and is not abusive. This may actually be point of the film, to motivate an examination of personal values--but if so it is a point made by a very, at times almost impossibly indirect implication. Recommended for sophisticated viewers, but even they are more likely to find it more problematic than substantial.Gary F. Taylor, aka GFT, Amazon Reviewer