Worth: $14.00
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Cast:
Michael Vanhevel, Christopher Cordell, Keenan Keeshig, Adam Daniel Mezei
Intro:
The film’s strength is in its integrity regarding the characters’ journeys and the interactions between them.
The Ace and the Scout examines a specific time and place in military history. Set in August 1918 on the Western Front in Northern France, its focus is a turning point that kicked off the 100 Days Offensive that led to Armistice.
“It tells the true story of the World War I battle at Orix Trench,” writer and director Aaron Huggett told Sarnia News. “Billy Bishop inspires a couple of young Ontario men to enlist late in the war and they find themselves behind enemy lines, cut off from reinforcement, fighting alongside Anishinaabe sharpshooter Francis Pegahmagabow.”
Huggett himself is something of a hero on the independent film scene, who has scored many awards in his native Canada and at global festivals. The Ace and the Scout is Huggett’s fourth historical film created through production company Electric Moving Pictures. Huggett wears many hats on this movie, including producer, set design, colourist and cinematographer.
Low budget, sometimes stagey, the film opens with a big splash of jingoism as fighter pilot hero Bishop, played by a Captain Marvel-esque Michael Vanhevel as the Ace of the title, urges the local boys in a recruitment speech to enlist and ‘Beat the Hun.’
The impeccable period setting, Ontario 1918, and style are engaging enough to take us with the two new recruits over to France and the trenches.
From there, the story is anything but the cliche teased at the start. Without the Hollywood budget, battle scenes are simplified and lack blockbuster tension. The film’s strength is in its integrity regarding the characters’ journeys and the interactions between them. From a quietly powerful scene between a captain and his lieutenant, where the former is under orders from his superiors to ask the impossible of his exhausted platoon, it’s easy to see why the film was selected for a veterans festival.
“What’s it like to kill a man?” asks new recruit Rob of the seasoned ‘Bench’ played with sharp intensity by Christopher Cordell.
“How many gotta die to win the war?” asks another. “They got a number picked out?”
These are the questions on the raw that concern the men, grappling with the terrible reality of what they are facing. This really is a film for, to quote a character’s voice over, “The ones who remember, the ones who can’t forget.”
Huggett and his crew’s respect for the subject is in the details of the uniforms, the soldiers’ personal items, the understated intimacy of scenes between characters. The production company’s remit states: when possible, we film the history where it happened, and sometimes even cast direct descendants of the historical figures to play the roles. We also bring in experts such as authors and military advisers.
A great example is Pegahmagabow, the Scout of the title, a legendary sniper played by Keenan Keeshig, an indigenous activist who, like Pegahmagabow, grew up in Shawanaga First Nation.
Though The Ace and the Scout’s crowd funding and local cultural grant didn’t stretch to a European location, the scenes were recreated in Ontario to the best standard possible on the limited budget. As Huggett explained to Sarnia News, “we constructed about a half acre of battlefield World War I trenches just outside of Oil Springs, we filmed in Petrolia, we filmed in Kent Bridge, we also were able to film aerial dog-fight scenes in World War I planes in the Kitchener-Waterloo, Hamilton area, in the skies above the countryside there. So, it’s been an amazing experience.”
Another aspect of the movie that may ring true with veterans is how it portrays the enemy, in this case the German troops. There are powerful scenes that humanise rather than demonise, as man meets man in the awful situations of war. We switch from trench to opposing trench during combat and even the frightening presence of a German officer (Adam Daniel Mezei) emphasises the stress of warfare on both sides in a scene where prisoners are exchanged – one of the film’s best moments.
Film festivals are often great reminders of why we tell stories, occasions where specific sectors of the community share their unique experiences, witnessed by others. Often, as in the French, Jewish or Iranian festivals for example, the theme is about a shared language and culture. In the case of the Veterans Film Festival, it’s the poignant interpretation of war, where the locations and time periods may change but the experiences are universal.
