EAU CLAIRE — "Regeneration" (Scotland 1998), a World War I drama that focuses on the war fought off the battlefield, will be presented Nov. 9-12 at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.
          The International Film Society will screen Gillies MacKinnon's fact-based drama Thursday through Sunday at 6 and 8:30 p.m. in Davies Theatre.
          The year is 1917. After serving at the front for two years, noted poet and decorated soldier Siegfried Sassoon (James Wilby) issues a widely publicized statement protesting the war. Facing court-martial, he opts for a stay in Craiglockhart, a castle adapted for use as a military mental hospital just outside Edinburgh, Scotland.
          At Craiglockhart, Sassoon's moral struggle intersects with those of three other hospital residents: shy, mystical Wilfred Owen (Stuart Bunce), an emerging poet who idolizes Sassoon; Billy Prior (Jonny Lee Miller), a working-class soldier rendered mute by battlefield trauma; and head psychiatrist William Rivers (Jonathan Pryce), whose sense of duty is cracking under the strain of his job.
          "Rivers finds himself increasingly shaken in his certitude that he can cure such deep-seated injuries or even that he should," wrote New York Times film critic Janet Maslin. "With battle remembered by the traumatized soldiers as a panorama of muddy horrors, and hauntingly captured by MacKinnon, 'Regeneration' addresses difficult questions about what these men can and should do with their futures."
          Based on Pat Barker's Booker Prize-winning novel, the 113-minute film (titled "Behind the Lines" for U.S. release) is not rated.
          Tickets, available at the University Service Center, (715) 836-3727, are $2 for International Film Society members and UW-Eau Claire faculty and staff or $1 for UW-Eau Claire students.
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JS/BW

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Updated: Oct. 26, 2000