A war movie that challenges us to ask ‘what would I do?’

The Zone of Interest is set to be the hit of 2024, but this Netflix movie offers a different take on survival and our moral compass

Matteo Simoni and Stef Aerts in Will.

Hands up if you know much about the Nazi occupation of Belgium between 1940 and 1944.

Extra points if you are familiar with the collaboration/resistance that divided that country’s 8 million people, or if you knew that 25,000 Jews were sent to death camps from cities such as Brussels and Antwerp with the assistance of local police forces, often applauded by anti-Semitic groups in the Belgian establishment.

Unlike the French occupation in WWII, which has been bread and butter for filmmakers for more than 50 years, we haven’t seen much in popular culture about what happened in Belgium after King Leopold surrendered on May 28, 1940.

The French story, of course, was whitewashed for decades. Hands up if you grew up in Australia convinced every single Frenchman or woman was in the resistance.

The line between fact and fiction about how civilians in occupied Europe managed to get through those unimaginably horrible years, is indeed blurred. Which is why it’s good to view the new Netflix original movie, Will, through a critical lens. Not because it’s a whitewash, but because it’s the opposite – a damning look at survival, compromise and sacrifice that leaves you wondering, yet again, what you would have done/would do in a situation where the choice is between your death and your moral decay. The lens is needed in order to put this particular rendition into context and perhaps to send you back to the internet to learn more about a part of 20th century history still to be properly explored.

Based on a novel by Jeroen Olyslaegers, Will is the story of a teenager who joins the local Antwerp auxiliary police force in 1942. These recruits are supposed to be the interface between the occupied and the occupiers but, rather like the United Nations peacekeeping forces in the Balkans 30 years ago, are really expected to stand by and watch.

That approach is tested within the first few minutes of the movie as Wilfried Wils (Wil, despite the spelling of the title) and his partner Lode end up killing a Nazi officer to protect a Jewish family.

At this point, the movie looks set for the familiar route – the idealistic and selfless young men will surely navigate the mire, saving more Jews in the process and either giving their lives to the cause or emerging as heroes. Not so fast.

The strength of this film, directed by Tim Mielants (Peaky Blinders) is that it presents a world in which no one can be trusted and in which people such as Wil find themselves trapped by decisions made on the run in impossible situations.

It challenges the assumptions that Wil (Stef Aerts) and Lode (Matteo Simoni) will be locked together in joint self-interest and loyalty; or that once Wil falls in love with Lode’s sister Yvette (Annelore Crollet) they will be on the same page on the collaboration/resistance piece.

Mielants offers a more complex landscape.

At one point, Wil reminds Yvette that they are in a battle for survival where “conscience is a luxury”. The director asks us to question if that if really so, and he offers two answers; Yvette makes once choice, Wil another.

Wil’s final words, delivered as a voiceover, remind us of what we win and lose by the silence around deeply traumatic events: “And afterwards, people kept their mouths shut … Because you have to move on, they said. There’s no other way.”

The film has plenty of defects; the Nazis are over-the-top heinous as usual. The violence, including torture, can be accepted as shockingly necessary or gratuitous, depending on your point of view. At times, the story drags and some of the incidents (such as the club scene when Wil gets drunk and reveals the murder of the German officer) seem far-fetched even for these incredible times.

There is also an argument that the moral questions at the core of the Holocaust and WWII have been so well covered that we scarcely need another movie covering the territory. And it’s a particularly grim take on those times, with no easy answers about the choices made by protagonists.

But Will is worth watching – and not just because its content resonates with the issues we confront with Israel and Gaza. These are different circumstances, but the moral issues thrown up around the value of human life are not dissimilar. And when Wil is told by his “protector” that he must take a stand, we are reminded of the moral compromises that taking a stand can often involve.

What makes Will so interesting is that the focus is not on the Jewish victims or the Nazi oppressors or the Germans who voted Hitler into power and then were forced to deal with the consequences, but with the truly innocent Europeans who fought the German invaders and lost and were then trapped in a world of moral pain.

A footnote on the violence and just how necessary it is, or is not, in films such as this.

One of the Will reviewers compares it with The Zone of Interest, an Academy Award contender by Jonathan Glazer. It tells the story of Rudolf Hoss, the commandant of Auschwitz, who lived with his family next door to the camp. The parents and five kids enjoy a normal life alongside the horror, and the film is reportedly deeply affecting, despite the fact, or perhaps because of the fact, that the murder in the camp is never seen by the viewer.

Instead we are given a soundtrack running in the background with the sirens, gunshots and screams ignored by the family, underlining their moral deafness. The Zone of Interest is in cinemas this month in Australia – a potentially interesting contrast to the creative treatment in Will.

Will is screening on Netflix.