Official Synopsis:
Seamlessly interweaving archival war footage and a fictional narrative, Stuart Cooper's immersive account of one 20-year-old's journey from basic training to the battle front lines at D-day brings all the terrors and isolation of war to its viewers with jolting authenticity. Overlord, impressionistically shot by Stanley Kubrick's longtime cinematographer John Alcott, is both a document of WWII and a dreamlike meditation on man's smallness in a large, incomprehensible machine.
Our Take:
Stuart Cooper’s Overlord is one of the best war films I have ever seen, and luckily it has been given one of the best DVD releases as well by the highly esteemed Criterion. Overlord is as unique as it is great in its masterful pairing of real World War II footage and original material shot by Cooper. Where Hollywood movies of past and present like to follow a traditional hero through battle, or more recently show hyper-realistic war violence to get their point across, Overlord takes a far more personal path to the same end. Following the protagonist of this film, Tom (Brian Stirner), from the day he leaves for boot camp until his arrival at the beach on D-Day, the audience gets a very personal take on what it might have felt like to have served as a private during World War II.
This is not your average action-packed war film; it is a psychological journey, and one that is well worth taking. Cooper is clearly an expert in making the ugly beautiful as air raids are transformed into living poetry before our eyes, but this is no glamorization of war and violence; Cooper quickly reels us back in by showing the bombed-out town ablaze and giving us a glimpse of a corpse or two in order to ensure that the severity of the war doesn’t escape us. This is truly a work of art that was made possible not only by the excellent work of Cooper and cinematographer John Alcott, but of the servicemen who risked, and in some cases lost, their lives filming the archival footage that makes up a great deal of this film.
It is well-known that Criterion has a reputation for releasing supplement-rich discs with beautiful transfers of important films. Such a reputation is earned and maintained with excellent releases such as this one, number 382 in the Criterion Collection. The complete list of supplemental material is as follows:
* Audio commentary - Featuring director Stuart Cooper and actor Brian Stirner.
* Mining the Archive (24 minutes) - A video featuring Imperial War Museum film archivists detailing the war footage used in the film.
* Capa Influences Cooper (8 minutes) - A photo essay featuring Cooper on photographer Robert Capa.
* A Test of Violence (1969) (15 minutes) - Cooper's short film about Spanish artist Juan Genoves.
* Cameramen at War (15 minutes) – The British Ministry of Information's 1943 film tribute to newsreel and service film unit cameramen.
* Germany Calling (3 minutes) - A 1941 British Ministry of Information propaganda film, clips of which appear in Overlord.
* Soldier’s Journals – Journal excerpts from two D-day soldiers read by Brian Stirner with introduction by Stuart Cooper. This feature is audio only.
* Theatrical trailer.
* 28-page Booklet – Contains a new essay by critic Kent Jones, a short history of the Imperial War Museum, and excerpts from the Overlord novelization by Cooper and Christopher Hudson.
Overlord is a criminally overlooked war film, but now thanks to Criterion it is available on DVD for the first time with a gorgeous transfer and packaged with a ton of cool and interesting extras. This is certainly one of the best single disc releases with regard to bonus content released thus far in the illustrious history of Criterion. Fans of this film or war films in general will be blown away by this release and the plethora of historical insight into World War II cameramen that is found on th disc. This should be an immediate addition to any serious DVD collector’s collection as well as anyone who enjoys excellent filmmaking or war movies in general. It is with releases like this that Criterion continues to prove why it is the yardstick against which all other DVD releases are measured.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!
Overall Picture:
Movie: A+
DVD: A+
- Matthew Orlando
Staff Writer
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