Every family has its secrets - and its lies. The Lamberts have Uncle Harry, who fought in World War I but never came home from France. Each Lambert relative now clings to a different story: Harry died a hero's death on the battlefield. Harry married a sweet French girl. Harry drowned in the mud in Gallipoli. Harry was a coward who ran from the enemy. As his great-niece Julie struggles to sift fact from fiction, she finds how easy it is to rewrite the past. Gradually Harry comes to life: the awkward boy in turn-of-the-century Australia, the obedient son caring for his ageing mother, the 40-year-old bachelor, the reluctant soldier in France. Initially placid Harry's posted out of harm's way - but then he's called up to the front, and makes a decision that not only changes the course of his life, but changes the way he sees himself. (Backcover)
An Accidental Soldier
( dir. Rachel Ward
)
Australia
:
Taylor Media
Essential Viewing
,
2013
Z1912311
2013
single work
film/TV
'Harry Lambert, a shy and gentle man, shamed by his rural Australian town into joining the armed forces as a baker in the service corps. When the bakers are thrown into the front line, Harry deserts. In countryside swarming with gendarmes, Harry barely avoids capture when Colombe Jacotot takes pity on him. Colombe is a stoic farm-wife, bowed by hard work and tragedy. Within her bare cottage, Harry and Colombe discover a love that is as powerful as it is unexpected.'
Source: Screen Australia. (Sighted: 31/3/2014)
'The public discussion about Australia’s military past seems to be getting increasingly histrionic every year. In the hands of our politicians, who apparently have an innate understanding of the power of the military story to promote self-serving nationalism, our dominant war narrative is about a little country’s unbounded male courage and sacrifice. Indeed, we are almost always told about the men, the ‘Diggers’, who are held aloft as the archetype of the faultless Antipodean hero. Coerced to the surface are tales about young, white men from idyllic country towns who, when the whistle blows, blindly throw themselves over the top. Thankfully, a handful of historians and fiction writers are starting to explore different war narratives.' (Introduction)
'The public discussion about Australia’s military past seems to be getting increasingly histrionic every year. In the hands of our politicians, who apparently have an innate understanding of the power of the military story to promote self-serving nationalism, our dominant war narrative is about a little country’s unbounded male courage and sacrifice. Indeed, we are almost always told about the men, the ‘Diggers’, who are held aloft as the archetype of the faultless Antipodean hero. Coerced to the surface are tales about young, white men from idyllic country towns who, when the whistle blows, blindly throw themselves over the top. Thankfully, a handful of historians and fiction writers are starting to explore different war narratives.' (Introduction)
