Pitfall
2017 · 15m
Directed by Ben Desmond
Genres: drama, historical, war
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
As German forces retreat in 1943, two enemy soldiers' scuffle is interrupted by a fall into an underground chamber, where an unlikely alliance forms in the dark.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Everyone expects a war film about enemy soldiers to either brutalize or sentimentalize the moment they stop fighting—Pitfall does neither, which would be contrarian enough, except the actual subversion is how it lets tenderness feel earned rather than imposed by the premise.
Desmond positions this within a precise lineage of intimacy-in-extremis cinema—Pialat, perhaps early Haneke—where the formal constraint of the underground chamber becomes both literal and metaphorical frame, the darkness a deliberate choice that transforms a WWII encounter into something genuinely elegiac.
The decision to keep the soldiers mostly unseen until the fall, relying on voice and proximity in the dark, turns a 15-minute runtime into something that feels unhurried; one sound design choice—the quality of breath, the texture of silence—does the entire emotional work.
Reviews
Pitfall isn't just engaging; it is soul-stirring. While enough stories have been woven around the horrors of war, apparently not enough have been able to bring out the human side of it.