Truer words...

...have yet to be spoken about the Paul Gross historical epic Passchendaele:

If the battle scenes in Passchendaele seem extraordinarily realistic, it's because producer/director/star Paul Gross cared enough to get the very best.

Most of the 100 or so extras who helped stage the battle scenes are members of the Canadian Forces, professional soldiers many of whom had either just returned from Afghanistan or who were about to leave.

"Having real soldiers on the set gave the project a real sobriety, because in war people can and are killed," Gross said. "Film sets can be a bit of an airy make-believe world, but they kept us very grounded." [Babbler's emphasis]

Good on Gross for making that decision, and for saying what he did about the soldiers who helped him make the movie.

You other want reasons to see the film? Here's one:

In the meantime, it is already worth celebrating the other admirable feature of Mr. Gross's approach: his commitment to a genuine Canadian history that reaches back beyond the Trudeauvian Year Zero.

That line's a highlight-of-the-night candidate, by the way.

Here's another:

...we might have expected that more than 16 per cent of us could have identified Germany and Austria (from a supplied list of five nations!) as our enemies during the First World War. That was included in the findings of the new survey. As well, nearly four in 10 here believe that the Americans entered the "Great War" ahead of Canadians. Among younger citizens aged 18-34, that figure jumps to nearly 50 per cent.

Fewer than half of us are aware that Remembrance Day marked the end of the First World War. One in four didn't know that Canada, rather than the U.S., had a greater percentage of its population serve in the war. It was far higher, in fact.

Hand-wringing won't get us anywhere. And the old saw that those unaware of history's lessons are condemned to repeat its mistakes is actually debatable.

But our profound ignorance of the Canadian story -- occasionally actually trumpeted in some smug circles -- can hardly be seen as a good thing for any people anywhere. Gross says his "mission in making this movie is to help keep alive the memory of our nation's courage."

That's a noble endeavour, and a very difficult one. Gross and his backers have given it a go, much to their credit.

I'm really hoping I like the movie itself, because much as I like the idea of the movie, when I'm in the theatre, I just want to be entertained.

But even if I'm not raving about it when I come out, the incrementalist in me will tell you to go support the film. Because every effort - no matter how strong - to tell such stories is of immeasurable value to this country, where we seem so predisposed to cultural forgetfulness.