Tom (Brian Stirner) is a young man who is soon set to leave his comfortable suburban home in Britain and head for the battlefields of the Second World War, where he will be serving alongside his fellow countrymen and Allies in the battle for victory against the Axis forces. Tom is a creative young man with a penchant for literature, and has a vivid imagination, which may be a merit in ordinary society (especially in his underlying artistic endeavours), but in times of war, it is a major shortcoming, as he is constantly haunted by images of his own death, and the anxieties of his fellow soldiers don’t do much to assuage his own concerns, as they are too experiencing the same debilitating fear of not knowing what awaits them on the hostile playground of war. Over the course of his service, leading up to the storming of Normandy, Tom is plagued by the feeling that he is heading towards his demise on that particular battlefield, with his premonitions on death only increasing in regularity and intensity as the impending invasion looms. He cannot help but feel conflicted – as a Briton, it is his responsibility to fight for his country and serve those who have sacrificed so much for him. Yet, as a human being, he is terrified beyond belief and secretly hopes that somehow he will be spared from having to meet his fate, much like innumerable other men who fought in history’s increasingly violent wars, and laid down their lives for the sake of their nation.

In 1917, at the peak of the First World War, Wilfred Owen, a soldier himself, wrote a poem that has come to be considered one of the most seminal pieces of wartime literature, “Anthem for a Doomed Youth”, a harrowing testament to the brutality of war, and the various struggles individuals who enter into the travesty of armed conflict often experience. Throughout the entirety of Overlord, this poem kept coming to mind. It would almost be foolish to think that this piece didn’t serve to inspire Overlord, or at least helped set the baseline for this bleak and harrowing exploration of war and its psychological and social consequences – much like Owen’s work, this film is an objective statement on wartime experience that becomes all the more moving when you consider how honest it is, and how it tends towards almost minimalistic simplicity rather than emotional construction of certain situations. One of the most unsettling portrayals of war ever put on film, Stuart Cooper captures the existential angst that is often missing in more jingoistic portrayals of conflict, focusing on the deeply personal and undeniably profound in his investigation of the effects war has on the individual. By no means an easy film in any discernible way, Overlord is a powerful manifesto on the human spirit, and the anxieties that are naturally evoked in times as difficult as war, and a potent reminder that while history may look fondly upon the victor, when it gets down to the individual level, there is a complete absence of any heroes or villains in war, especially when the focus is not on the leaders making the decisions, but on the innocent people that are victim to these manipulative attempts to garner power through any means necessary, or as Owen calls them, “these who die as cattle”, who are disposed of and disregarded like common animals, with the only reward for your sacrifice being a distant memory by those who knew you, and perhaps a parade or two to commemorate your part in unnecessary conflict.

This is the most significant aspect of the film – it is vehemently against war itself, but deeply empathetic to the plight of the soldiers, who sacrifice themselves for the sake of their country, operating under the illusion that what they are doing is actually honourable. The film does not show these soldiers as being delusional – far from it, as they are frequently demonstrated as being complex individuals who understand they are fighting a losing war, and that many of them will not come home. There is a certain poignancy that comes throughout this film when we see soldiers bid farewell to their family, or make a new friend – its almost as if they believe they are going to survive, even though they know the chances of that are not all that likely, and even if someone doesn’t die in conflict, they’ll always carry the trauma of war with them. This is a film motivated less by the act of war, and more the circumstances within it, and it makes for truly harrowing viewing, especially when we consider how this film is not a celebratory piece, but rather one that is inherently bleak – despite knowing that the Allies were eventually victorious, this film is still entirely hopeless, because how does the eventual victory matter when so many lives have been needlessly lost to achieve it?

Overlord is not a pleasant film, but it definitely is an astonishing piece of narrative storytelling and a profoundly moving representation of war and its hopeless nature. Focused not on the actual reason for the Second World War, but rather on the nature of existence during it, Cooper takes an unflinching look at the circumstances of war that stands alongside some of the most poignant and unsettling wartime storytelling ever made. It is a very unconventional war film – for one, there is not a single moment of actual fighting involving any of the main characters until the final scene, where the protagonist finds his premonitions to be true when he is viciously gunned down upon entering the battlefield. Overlord proves that there is a lot more to war than just the actual battles, and this film occupies the realm of the profoundly human, looking at the impact of war and its harrowing effects, but rather than showing the trauma that occurs after the fact, it looks at the fear and insecurity that comes during the actual process of fighting in war, showing how there is more to it than just what we see represented in more traditional portrayals of the Second World War.

Cooper proves himself to be a talented filmmaker in his own right with his unique representation of the Second World War. Detaching the sometimes heavy subject matter, we are presented with a stark and brilliant piece of social commentary that blends fact and fiction in a way that is truly innovative. The director makes use of the almost endless supply of archival material to create a portrait of the era, using real documentary footage to add nuance to the film, and elevates it from merely being a representation of the era, and more of a film that attempts to show the truth of the events it depicts through actually presenting us with those images, rather than recreating them. Overlord can be accused of being not much more than an experimental war film, whereby real footage is blended with reconstructions (made through the use of the same equipment used during the war), but even if one isn’t particularly swayed by the content of the film, the visual splendour itself is something to behold – beautifully-composed and certainly unforgettable in its harrowing honesty, Cooper’s film is a fascinating achievement of not only meaningful social and political commentary, but of unique, innovative filmmaking as well.

The primary function of Overlord appears to be a statement on demise. The main character constantly experiences visions of his own death, which could either be some form of otherworldly foresight where he has the unfortunate ability to see his own imminent demise or simply the manifestation of his own fragile state. There is nothing particularly special about the character of Tom – he’s shown to be just a regular young man from an ordinary background who becomes one of the multitudes of soldiers who find themselves shuffled off to Europe’s notorious battlefields, whose death is not ideal, but also no disastrous, because he is ultimately just another one of thousands chosen to fight for Britain. The film primarily serves to be a meditation on death, with Tom’s visions being harrowing, but also strangely hypnotic. This is far from a brutal or grotesque portrayal of war – with the exception of a few sporadic scenes, as well as the disturbing climax, there is hardly any on-screen violence, and the brutality is kept in the shadows, existing only through implication and inference, until the climactic moments when the character we have become so attached to is shot down in a truly harrowing fashion. The way Overlord ruminates on the concept of dying before one’s time is astoundingly disturbing, and once again evokes the aforementioned poem by Owen (who died as a very young man himself after the war), with the final sounds an innocent soldier hears being the “stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle” as they fall to the ground, just another casualty in an ever-increasing assembly line of heartwrenching tragedy.

Overlord is a beautiful film – it combines documentary with fiction to construct a nuanced portrayal of war that is very simple but highly effective. Cooper manages to avoid any sense of victory in how this film represents war, rather opting for a perspective that is certainly harrowing and disquieting, but still extremely effective, leaving an indelible impression on the viewer, who accompanies our protagonist as he goes in search of some inner sanctity in a time when every bit of courage is needed to survive, at least in terms of the psychological machinations that make such events so emotionally catastrophic. Cooper’s film attempts to get into the mind of young soldiers who are on their way to fight for their country, knowing that they may not return and that there is a huge possibility the majority of them will never grow old. Yet, they keep the anxiety at bay by finding the humour in the small moments and evade the crushing despair of not knowing if you’ll make it to the end of the week. Its a powerful film, and while it definitely is undeniably cold and clinical in its execution (it would not be appropriate any other way), its a deeply poignant and extremely emotional journey into a side of war hardly represented with such explicit honesty, and the result is an astonishing achievement that needs to ruminate before any discernible conclusion can be made, but it is quite clear that while certainly a disturbing film, Overlord is singularly unforgettable and powerful in every conceivable way.