Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Will’ on Netflix, a Belgian World War II Drama Situated in an Awful Moral Quagmire

The title of Belgian World War II drama Will (now on Netflix) has a double meaning: It’s about a man named Wil who struggles – mightily, I might add – to determine if he possesses the will to resist Nazi cruelty. This is an engrossing period piece and character drama highlighted by sudden bursts of upsetting violence, which our titular protagonist participates in on occasion while he’s smack in the middle of an impossible situation. The film’s subject matter and occasional graphic imagery makes it a tough watch, but is it worth gutting out the heavy drama? Let’s find out.

WILL: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Wilfried Wils (Stef Aerts) and his friend Lode Metdepenningen (Matteo Simoni) are greenhorns on the Antwerp police force. It’s their first day on the job. Their uniforms are crisp and clean, unsullied with unsightly wear. They listen to their commanding officer’s orders: Their job is to be mediators between their fellow Belgians and the occupying Germans. The gist of it is, stand there and watch. Be passive. Do as you’re told. And that’s a problem if your moral compass is straight and true – the occupying Germans are psychotic racist Nazis, and I know that’s redundant phrasing, but I need to be clear and to the point, because from where Wil’s standing, the gray areas are wide and deep and expansive. It’s 1942.

Wil and Lode’s first assignment is to escort a Feldgendarmerie – the Nazi military police – to a home where Jewish occupants have “refused to work.” The Feldgendarm will arrest the Litzke family, a mother and a father and a young girl, and take them, well, nobody says where, but we can be sure it’ll be, well, fateful. And Wil and Lode know it. They stand by uncomfortably as the Feldgendarm pops pills and rages at the Litzkes, threatening them, roughing them up. Of course they’re unarmed, and of course the Feldengarm likens them to “rats,” and in a sudden fit of violent rage, Wil shoves the Feldgendarm and rams his face into a beam and he’s dead. He and Lode pry up a manhole cover and drop the body in, and Wil is now deep, deep into the gray expanse.

This isn’t the first time we’ll see Wil seemingly possessed by violence. It’s out of character for him – he’s young, slight of build and yearns to be an artist. But the world around him is changing, and he must change with it no matter how difficult the transition might be. He finds himself in a nowhere zone: His police superiors are squeezed by arrogant Nazi commandant Gregor (Dimitrij Schaad), who wants to know what happened to the now-missing Feldgendarm. Lode joins a secret Belgian resistance group led by the Professor (Jan Decleir), and whose ranks include Lode’s sister Yvette (Annelore Crollet), who shows romantic interest in Wil. On the other end is Felix Verschaffel (Dirk Roofthooft), a Nazi ally who Wil’s family is indebted to; Felix loves to paint, and sees Wil as a kindred spirit, and an easy recruit for bloody raids on Jewish neighborhoods. The investigation into the Feldgendarm persists; Wil is torn between the ideas of doing what’s right and doing what’s easy; his relationship with Yvette complicates his inner conflict. Meanwhile, he’s caught in a mighty internal tug-o’-war: Who is he? A passive observer or an aggressive man of action?

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Some sequences of subterfuge in the presence of highly punchable Nazi faces recall Inglourious Basterds, although Will is a thoroughly poker-faced and tonally conventional movie. Otherwise, it has a similar aesthetic to other 20th-century war films produced by Netflix, e.g. Narvik and All Quiet on the Western Front.

Performance Worth Watching: Crollet is a magnetic presence here. She renders Yvette as a morally righteous individual whose simmering sexuality ignites a flame in Wil – even though he isn’t sure where and when he should let that flame burn.  

Memorable Dialogue: Wil comes to a harshly pragmatic conclusion about the times he’s living in: “This is about survival. A conscience is a luxury.”

Sex and Skin: Just some out-of-frame action, sans nudeness.

Our Take: Will’s opening 10 minutes is gripping and intense, establishing a suspenseful tone for the rest of the film: Will Gregor and his sneering, speed-popping goons suss out Wil’s role in the case of the missing Feldgendarm? Will Yvette inspire Wil to stand up and fight the Nazis? Will peer and social pressure influence Wil to go with the fascist flow? Wil frustrates Yvette – and by extension, us – by wavering one way and then the other, torn between self-preservation and selflessness, between risk and his innate aversion to it. Standing pat and being Switzerland in this situation isn’t an option when you’re pulled between outside influences and the nagging conscience inside his head. The question, again, is whether he has the will to overcome his weaknesses.

The conclusion director and writer Tim Mielants – co-scripting with Carl Joos, adapting a novel by Jeroen Olyslaegers – arrives at isn’t definitive, and we shouldn’t expect it to be. Will’s primary conflicts are far from cut-and-dried; it’s a bummer that the Nazis aren’t always derailed by their own overconfidence and the protagonists don’t always do what’s right and true. That’s the stuff of fantasy, and Mielants’ goal is to fashion a realistic and plausible rock-and-a-hard-place conundrum, and show us what happens when his characters veer between ethical poles. It’s disheartening to see Wil – who for the most part is a decent human being – enjoy a night out dancing with Yvette, and see it spoiled when the wily and suspicious Gregor turns up at the club to torment them. Great joy and great pain butt up against each other like ships too close in the harbor, and Wil is the seal between them, trying not to get squished. 

Mielants skillfully cultivates slow-burn tension, and Robrecht Heyvaert’s cinematography is handsome and memorable. The brunt of the film’s effectiveness lies in the performances, and our lack of patience with Aerts’ somewhat bland depiction of a meek man’s internal struggle is eventually enlivened by Crollet’s work; Wil truly comes to life when she’s on screen, and you’ll wish the screenplay spent more time developing her character. Sometimes it seems as if the core idea looms like a long shadow over the characters – the best of them have about two-and-a-half dimensions – but at least that idea is fraught and compelling enough to hold our attention. Be thankful this is more ambitious than yet another kick-the-Nazis’-asses action picture.

Our Call: All the big, sweeping stories of WWII seem to have been told over and over again; Wil wisely tells an absorbing small-scale story that keenly represents the big-picture conflict. STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.