King & Country

During World War I, a young soldier, Hamp, deserts his post, attempting to escape the ever-present sound of guns and walk home. Captain Hargreaves, an aristocratic and British Army lawyer must defend Hamp before the army tribunal, for whom the crime of desertion carries a nasty stigma and the penalty of execution. Initially, Hargreaves approaches Hamp’s case with disdain; however, upon learning that Hamp volunteered for duty on a dare, that he is the sole survivor of his unit and that his wife has been unfaithful in his absence, his efforts on Hamp’s behalf become more impassioned and earnest. Faced with the unfeeling face of the army bureaucracy, Hargreaves’s arguments fall on deaf ears as Hamp becomes a tool of morale boosting on the eve of the troop’s dispersal into an impending bloody battle.

I wanted the whole film to present a sincere, unbearable and inevitable image of the stupidity and horror of what men are able to do to one another. Even in our day war is still considered glorious. Notwithstanding pacifism, patriotism is regarded as a virtue. King and Country is a war film in which not a shot is fired, except in the scene of the execution. There is no physical violence. But I think that there is a great deal of moral or spiritual violence, or at least I hope so.

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