The war is far away, but ever so close, in Battleground (Campo di Battaglia), director Gianni Amelio’s sober study of doctors treating wounded soldiers in Italy as World War I comes to a close. Reducing the conflict to a chamber piece where a trio of former medical students clash over the moral repercussions of their duties, the film raises some interesting and altogether timely questions, but never builds into a powerful drama.

Set almost entirely in a military hospital miles from the front, Battleground fitfully conveys the utter horrors of the Great War, revealing the deep physical and psychological injuries of soldiers arriving on stretchers for treatment. Many of them are in fact so shell-shocked (what we now call Ptsd) that they’re willing to further harm themselves in order to avoid getting sent back to the front, where they are sure to die.

The patients are triaged and...