It's difficult to comprehend what it is some reviewers saw in this film. I see some of them saying it was like looking through a window into another time, and I suppose there may be some truth to that. But imagine someone looking through a window into your life on a random, drab, uneventful day, and how bored they would be watching you go through your daily routine. That is essentially this film.
Except it is worse than that. The characters rarely speak, and when they do it is never meaningful, just the stuttering utterances of awkward, unintelligent men as they stumble through the mundane events of their rural lives. There is virtually no emotion in any of the characters: they are all drab, dour, and boring. Emotional characters whose motivations and desires are clear and relatable can sometimes draw us into something even if it lacks a compelling plot, but this film has neither. Not only does it lack a compelling plot, it lacks any plot at all. There is no pacing to the story: no rise, no fall, no drama. The film even managed to make a civil war battle seem drab and boring. The character who goes to war is not animated even when life and death hang in the balance. He shows no fear, no passion, none of the hatred for the enemy that men summon to compel them to kill before their foes kill their friend and themselves. He seems to have a friend who reads and writes letters for him, but we do not see whether his friend falls in battle, and he certainly never looks for him.
Understated is not always bad, but this film stretches it to unstated. The film has nothing to say, nothing to show us, and absolutely no point. I simply cannot imagine how anyone would come away from this experience not feeling like they were robbed of their time. If not for the anticipation of hoping that something might happen (nothing does), I could have had the same experience watching paint dry, and would have come away no less emotionally or intellectually satisfied.
As a final note, the title of this film feels quite inappropriate. There is no conflict in the film to which that assertion applies, and if it is merely a statement of what the film is supposed to be about, it is also incorrect. If they're just trying to tell us what's going to happen (almost nothing), it should rightly be "A Man Goes to a Battle, While Another Does Not" and neither has any clear reason or motivation for doing or not doing these things. I thought perhaps toward the end there might be a conflict, the brother who stayed resenting the brother who left for abandoning him, and the brother who left thinking the brother who stayed a coward, or something, and perhaps telling him that "Men Go to Battle" as a challenge to his manhood. Alas, conflict would require emotion, and both conflict and emotion seem utterly beyond the abilities or intentions of the filmmakers. Instead the characters simply plod along, and the paint slowly dries.
