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Gillies MacKinnon’s highly
praised adaptation of Pat Barker’s
novel is a moving and powerful
study of war and its devastating effects.
Set in a military hospital during
World War I, the film tells of a real
life encounter between army psy-
chologist Dr William Rivers
(Jonathan Pryce), and the poet |
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Siegfried Sassoon (James Wilby), who has been institutionalized in an attempt to undermine his public disapproval of the war.
It also concerns the young poet Wilfred Owen (Stuart Bunce) who, with support
from Sassoon begins to write his great war poems.
Rivers, whose duty it is to return shell-shocked officers back to the trenches, is
tormented by the morality of what is being done in the name of medicine, especially
the treatment of working-class officer Billy Prior (Jonny Lee Miller) who has been
stricken dumb by the carnage he has witnessed.
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