Regeneration

”Regeneration” is a war epic about WWI based on Pat Barkers Booker Prize-awarded novell with the same name. It is based on real events and real people. The film is about four men who are work at the Craiglockart hospital in 1917. Three of them are patients who are treated for their war injuries by the psychiatrist William Rivers, one of the first to use Freudian methods to cure people with war injuries.
The film consist of several stories, but the main story revolves around River and his work with the patients which leads to him almost getting war injuries himself, just by listening to their stories.
A parallel story is that about the relationship between the two patients, Sasson and Owen. They develop a deep friendship which inspires Owen to write his famous poems. The film asks questions like what is currage and who can be called a hero. Sasson has, after he received a medal, spoken pubicly against the war. by doing this, he had to chose between beeing put on trial in court martial, or declare himself insane. He chose the latter and by doing so he ended up on Craiglockart. It is Rivers task to declare Sasson's insanity, but he is caught in moral dilemmas about courage and integrety. Is war ever justified? he askes himself.
According to the director Gillis MacKinnon ”Renegation” is not a film tking a stand neither for nor against war. MacKinnon wants the film to appear as complex as life itself. The recordig of the film was demanding for the actors and for the filmteam since MacKinnon wanted to represent the environments as realisticly as possible. The actors were walking around in mud while bombs were exploading around them.
- But although the trials wre hard, we had a clean, warm bed to go home to, says the actor Jame Wilby.
Craiglockart is a university today, and was restaured for the filming with the guidanse of old photographies.