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The subject matter of "Regeneration" is open to potential exploitation in the hands of producers who would seek to elicit simple but emotive reactions from an audience. Director Gillies MacKinnon produces instead a film that achieves its power through understatement, scarred with glimpses into the hell that the men of the First World War were thrust into.
The story told here is of the real life protest by the poet Siegfried Sassoon (James Wilby) at what he saw to be a campaign by the British of needless aggression during the First World War. His very public disapproval is quickly neutralised by the Government, which sends him to an Edinburgh institution run by army psychologist Dr William Rivers (Jonathan Pryce). His job is to convince Sassoon to renounce his stand and return him to the front.
Sassoon's incarceration is among those who have crumbled under the immense horrors that they have witnessed in the field. While he is healthy, officers like Billy Prior (a superb Jonny Lee Miller) have been struck dumb by what they have seen.
An easy route to take with this movie would be to effectively condemn the 'healthy' Sassoon by example. This would be at the peril though of ignoring the pain of those around him, including Jonathan Pryce as Dr Rivers who is "In charge, but not in control". His is a performance that drives the film with a quiet power of trying to rescue the individuals who can no longer cope in a conflict of immense loss. The careful filming and measured performances all layer into a war film that is poignantly human.
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