This film is taken from the first book in the trilogy of Pat Barker novels centered around the First World War. A psychiatrist (
Jonathan Pryce) working in a jerry-built hospital in Scotland has to try and "heal" the minds of terrified and shell-shocked soldiers only to send them back to the front for more of what brought them to him in the first place. The disturbing and horrifying tales they tell of the hideous barbarity of war begin to effect his own self control.
Highly expositive of horors of trench warfare in WWI and mind set of its `leaders`.