Canopy

A brave experiment in stripped-down, visceral filmmaking, writer-director Aaron Wilson's World War II drama "Canopy" is ultimately upended by its minimalist conceit.

While not much is said in the Australian director Aaron Wilson's small-scale first feature, "Canopy," the film conveys volumes about war and humanity.

This is a film that eschews epic battle scenes and carnage to delve into the quieter, no less terrifying, moments of waiting and watching.

To the suddenly white-hot adventure subgenre of one or two souls alone against nature... add the more modestly scaled but no less absorbing wartime survival adventure "Canopy."

Much like his fly-boyflyboy underdog in the opening sequence, Wilson simply can't stick the landing.

Canopy's an exercise in mankind's implicit ability to trust, share, and protect as strength.

Canopy violates nearly every war movie convention, yet it better represents the realities of combat than most of its forerunners.

In many ways, Canopy is closer to a fairy tale than a war film, its soldier like a hero on a perilous, mystical journey through a primordial forest, with a sort of pre-linguistic logic guiding the action.

Canopy is a movie rich of its own world, an 80-minute work of filmmaking that rises above mere war or survival films and becomes something unique.

Canopy is a work of minimal, expressionistic storytelling whose unconventional dramatic beats inject fresh blood in a tired genre.

A humble hybrid between The Thin Red Line and Gravity, Canopy embraces the challenge of making a low-budget World War II film, distilling Australia's involvement in the Pacific Theater into the plight of one unfortunate paratrooper.

"Canopy" begins in stillness, ends in muteness, and in between seldom a word will be uttered. . . . All in all, the screenplay offers up two perfect roles for actors with poor memory recall.