Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Endless Trench’ on Netflix, the Story of a Man Hiding From Fascists for 30 Years

Netflix film The Endless Trench is Spain’s official entry for the international feature prize at the 93rd annual Oscar competition, and it has the perfect Oscar-baity premise: A political refugee hides inside a house for 30 years to avoid prosecution (and probably execution). You won’t be surprised to learn that this is Something That Really Happened, or that it Would Make for a Pretty Good Movie.

THE ENDLESS TRENCH: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Andalusia, Spain, 1936. Civil war is tearing the country apart, and fascist junta-humper Franco is winning. Higinio (Antonio de la Torre) is an outspoken Republican leftist (don’t trip on that phrase, American friends; different context, of course) who’s on the a-hole regime’s shitlist. Fleeing doesn’t work; he ends up at the bottom of a well, barely dodging bullets while his friends are murdered. A slug still in his leg, he hobbles back home, where his wife Rosa (Belen Cuesta) covers for him in the most literal sense — Higinio hides in a hole carved beneath a wooden fixture, peering through a crack as the house is ransacked. His neighbor Gonzalo (Vicente Vergara), a nationalist sympathizer who turned him in, stops by for uncordial visits, and soldiers take Rosa, who returns battered and weeping, her hair crudely chopped off. But she didn’t crack.

Rosa and Higinio are very much in love, but their dreams of honeymooning by the sea and raising a family must be curtailed. Three years go by. Although he frequently shouts himself awake from nightmares, he has yet to be discovered. He designs a more comfortable hidey-hole for his father to carve out in his house, although smuggling him out and across town is easier said than done. He scuttles through the street under a babushka like an old woman, is spotted, ducks down an alley, turns this way and then that way, gets away, lingers on a gorgeous sunset, then gets to his father’s house late but unmolested. It’ll be the last sunset he’ll see for decades.

And so Higinio lives behind the wall like a rat, peering through a peephole hidden by a mirror. Rosa sets up a seamstress shop in the home, and her primary customers are civil guardsmen who bring in their uniforms for mending. Yes, yikes. His narrow little cave has a bed, a lamp and a bookshelf on the wall, and he can at least leave it occasionally to wander the house a bit. Years pass. Rosa wants a child, but with the authorities still on the lookout for commies like Higinio, that seems like a complicated maneuver. He sees many things through the peephole, some of them absolutely worth the risk of exposing himself. But what he can’t see is what’s happening to his mind.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The Endless Trench is sort of like For Whom the Bell Tolls crossed with Rear Window.

Performance Worth Watching: Although de la Torre is strong in the lead role, Cuesta does most of the dramatic heavy lifting here, playing the character torn between the inside and outside worlds, who compromises her own relative freedom for the man she loves.

Memorable Dialogue: Rosa, when the marriage gets rocky: “You’re not here, are you? Are you? Is there somebody here? I’m asking you if you’re here. You’re not here. I’m all alone. You’re not a man, a father, a husband, you’re nothing. I’m alone. Who are you?”

Sex and Skin: This being a European movie, it has a fair amount of casual frontal nudity, a troubling rape scene and also a sort-of-hot but mostly sad sex scene featuring two people going at it in a dirty hole.

Our Take: At 147 minutes, The Endless Trench keenly recreates the feeling of being caught in a tight space for a very long time. If that sounds flippant, I apologize. But it’s a long movie for a reason, and that reason is, it wants us to feel the protagonist’s pain, if only a little bit. Thirty-three years is a long time, and considering the film is based on a true story, we needn’t downplay anyone’s suffering. The film effectively captures the agoraphobia Higinio slowly, slowly develops; how he becomes an observer instead of a participant in life; how we might sympathize with Rosa’s assertion that he may be an ideological stalwart but also a coward hiding from risk. Such are the film’s subtextual big ideas, and it wisely makes no clear moral assertion on any of them, leaving its themes up for interpretation.

This is a strong drama, skillfully directed by Aitor Arregi, Jon Garano and Jose Mari Goenaga. But in its quest for heady philosophizing, it doesn’t quite engage our emotions, nor does it wind its suspense tight enough to broach Hitchcockian territory. Perhaps it’s hemmed in by the concept — we never truly fear for Higinio’s life or believe he’s truly gone mad. He seems perfectly comfortable in his tiny space, bargaining Rosa’s life for his safety. Tonally, the film is too calm, too level-headed to stuff us between two tight walls, an extreme situation not quite rendered extreme enough.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The Endless Trench is good but not great, a sturdy and authentic period piece that’s worth a watch but probably not too many awards-season accolades.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream The Endless Trench on Netflix