war cinema
Oct. 23rd, 2008 09:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
baleanopteraDespite the insane workload I do love my current situation. The best thing is that I have an excellent excuse to watch movies. The worst part is that I have to watch movies. Particularly war movies. And if you’ve suspected that there are a lot of bad war films out there then I can assure you that this suspicion is correct.
The last one I dragged myself through was The Battle of the Bulge (1965)
I can safely say that there is nothing good about this film. Perhaps I should have expected as much when the only interesting character is played by Charles Bronson. The script is dull, the Ardennes look suspiciously like a Hollywood backplot, Henry Fonda looks like every scene he is in physically hurts him (not that I cannot relate. It hurts me too.) - oh, and the only reason the Germans lost was because they apparently ran out of fuel.To say I hate this film would be to invest it with more emotion than it deserves.
Memphis Belle (1990)
I actually saw this film in its theatrical release, and I remember liking it much more than I do now. It’s still sweet in its way, and there is lots of fun in seeing Sean Astin playing the womanising Rascal, but as a whole the film is so formulaic that even the pieces of dialogue becomes predictable.
Though what is interesting is the cinematography. Memphis Belle is one of the few, more modern WWII films made before Saving Private Ryan, and so the shaky camera, high colour saturation and grainy feel that is the Ryan-template is not present. Instead everything is in glorious colour (not shiny Pearl Harbour colour, but still). To be honest that’s a bit refreshing. Also interesting is a scene where the Colonel (David Strathairn) displays the box of letters from the bereaved families at homefront. As the voiceovers starts to the letters original footage is cut in. Now using original footage in the older black & white films were quite common, but this is one of the few times I’ve seen it used in colour films.
The Thin Red Line
This was more of a rewatch than a watch, but the fact remains that I have something of a love-hate relationship with this film. Whenever I watch it I get irritated, and yet I keep pondering scenes and pieces of dialogue for days afterwards.
There are parts of it that annoys me greatly – the way everything is a bit ahistorical (especially Sean Penn’s haircut), how all the voiceovers sound the same and the cinematographic infatuation with grass (sometimes less is more). And then I haven’t even touched on the whole "peaceful and primitive natives" thing that Malick has going for him.
Still, there are parts of it I find hauntingly beautiful and terrifying. Like the storming of the Japanese field hospital half way through the film. The whole scene is a composition of fog, light, grotesque killings, swelling music and a voiceover that goes:
"This great evil. Where does it come from? How'd it steal into the world?".
In fact, that sequence is so strong it in someway rescues part of the film.
Based on the time of its release The Thin Red Line is often compared with Saving Private Ryan, and if you pick up a book about war films you can usually pinpoint the author’s ideological stand by comparing what he/she says about these two films. Chances are they will love the one, and hate the other. Now I have issues with both and if you’d ask me for a recommendation for a World War II film I’d probably point out Band of Brothers. Yet I find it interesting the way The Thin Red Line and Saving Private Ryan are presented as opposites. The former is usually presented as the more auteur and philosophical, and the latter is seen as nostalgic and a bit anvillicious in its sentiment. Consider for instance this wonderful quote from the film’s producer Geisler:
Malick's Guadalcanal would be a Paradise Lost, an Eden, raped by the green poison, as Terry used to call it, of war. Much of the violence was to be portrayed indirectly. A soldier is shot, but rather than showing a Spielbergian bloody face we see a tree explode, the shredded vegetation, and a gorgeous bird with a broken wing flying out of a tree.
But to be honest I think both films are auteurish and anvillicious in parts. Granted Saving Private Ryan has the whole tag line of "This time the mission is a man" and the quoting of Emmerson and so forth, which is a bit anvillicious. Then again The Thin Red Line quotes the Illiad, and connects this quote with Greek company captain. Interestingly enough this character is Jewish in the book, and I see no real reason to make him Greek except to further underline the Iliad quote and to have Nick Nolte note that they read Homer in Greek at West Point. So yes, both films make it pretty clear that they want to say something profound and epic about war. Personally that just leaves me with a headache.
As for the auteur part then I think, in a way, they are evenly matched. Because if the slaughter of Japanese to the swelling tunes of Hans Zimmer and an all pervasive voiceover can be seen as a auteur, then so can the Omaha beach sequence of Saving Private Ryan. Both scenes leave a lasting impression, and both are striking and haunting.
Perhaps my biggest problem with The Thin Red Line is that I feel it tries to say so much that it becomes too much. Still, I rewatched it last week – and I still catch myself thinking about it. Damn Malick.
The last one I dragged myself through was The Battle of the Bulge (1965)
I can safely say that there is nothing good about this film. Perhaps I should have expected as much when the only interesting character is played by Charles Bronson. The script is dull, the Ardennes look suspiciously like a Hollywood backplot, Henry Fonda looks like every scene he is in physically hurts him (not that I cannot relate. It hurts me too.) - oh, and the only reason the Germans lost was because they apparently ran out of fuel.To say I hate this film would be to invest it with more emotion than it deserves.
Memphis Belle (1990)
I actually saw this film in its theatrical release, and I remember liking it much more than I do now. It’s still sweet in its way, and there is lots of fun in seeing Sean Astin playing the womanising Rascal, but as a whole the film is so formulaic that even the pieces of dialogue becomes predictable.
Though what is interesting is the cinematography. Memphis Belle is one of the few, more modern WWII films made before Saving Private Ryan, and so the shaky camera, high colour saturation and grainy feel that is the Ryan-template is not present. Instead everything is in glorious colour (not shiny Pearl Harbour colour, but still). To be honest that’s a bit refreshing. Also interesting is a scene where the Colonel (David Strathairn) displays the box of letters from the bereaved families at homefront. As the voiceovers starts to the letters original footage is cut in. Now using original footage in the older black & white films were quite common, but this is one of the few times I’ve seen it used in colour films.
The Thin Red Line
This was more of a rewatch than a watch, but the fact remains that I have something of a love-hate relationship with this film. Whenever I watch it I get irritated, and yet I keep pondering scenes and pieces of dialogue for days afterwards.
There are parts of it that annoys me greatly – the way everything is a bit ahistorical (especially Sean Penn’s haircut), how all the voiceovers sound the same and the cinematographic infatuation with grass (sometimes less is more). And then I haven’t even touched on the whole "peaceful and primitive natives" thing that Malick has going for him.
Still, there are parts of it I find hauntingly beautiful and terrifying. Like the storming of the Japanese field hospital half way through the film. The whole scene is a composition of fog, light, grotesque killings, swelling music and a voiceover that goes:
"This great evil. Where does it come from? How'd it steal into the world?".
In fact, that sequence is so strong it in someway rescues part of the film.
Based on the time of its release The Thin Red Line is often compared with Saving Private Ryan, and if you pick up a book about war films you can usually pinpoint the author’s ideological stand by comparing what he/she says about these two films. Chances are they will love the one, and hate the other. Now I have issues with both and if you’d ask me for a recommendation for a World War II film I’d probably point out Band of Brothers. Yet I find it interesting the way The Thin Red Line and Saving Private Ryan are presented as opposites. The former is usually presented as the more auteur and philosophical, and the latter is seen as nostalgic and a bit anvillicious in its sentiment. Consider for instance this wonderful quote from the film’s producer Geisler:
Malick's Guadalcanal would be a Paradise Lost, an Eden, raped by the green poison, as Terry used to call it, of war. Much of the violence was to be portrayed indirectly. A soldier is shot, but rather than showing a Spielbergian bloody face we see a tree explode, the shredded vegetation, and a gorgeous bird with a broken wing flying out of a tree.
But to be honest I think both films are auteurish and anvillicious in parts. Granted Saving Private Ryan has the whole tag line of "This time the mission is a man" and the quoting of Emmerson and so forth, which is a bit anvillicious. Then again The Thin Red Line quotes the Illiad, and connects this quote with Greek company captain. Interestingly enough this character is Jewish in the book, and I see no real reason to make him Greek except to further underline the Iliad quote and to have Nick Nolte note that they read Homer in Greek at West Point. So yes, both films make it pretty clear that they want to say something profound and epic about war. Personally that just leaves me with a headache.
As for the auteur part then I think, in a way, they are evenly matched. Because if the slaughter of Japanese to the swelling tunes of Hans Zimmer and an all pervasive voiceover can be seen as a auteur, then so can the Omaha beach sequence of Saving Private Ryan. Both scenes leave a lasting impression, and both are striking and haunting.
Perhaps my biggest problem with The Thin Red Line is that I feel it tries to say so much that it becomes too much. Still, I rewatched it last week – and I still catch myself thinking about it. Damn Malick.
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no subject
Date: 2008-10-23 08:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-23 08:10 pm (UTC)As for The Thin Red Line my biggest problem is that I LOVE parts of it, and I'm incredibly annoyed by other parts - so the whole thing becomes a bit schizophrenic
.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-24 11:15 am (UTC)And I'll take anvilicious pondering any day over anvilicious patriotism and Oscar Emotional Blackmail as a driving theme.
Hee hee, me, too.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-25 01:02 am (UTC)Yes, exactly! :)
no subject
Date: 2008-10-23 08:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-24 08:51 am (UTC)But The Thin Red Line really makes you think and ponder, I'll give it that.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-23 08:57 pm (UTC)I can’t say that there are many war movies that I like at all; since I kind of deal with this stuff professionally, I feel like none of them explain the complexities well enough :P
no subject
Date: 2008-10-24 07:53 am (UTC)I feel like none of them explain the complexities well enough :P
I'm in complete agreement there. To be honest that is quite a large factor in what I'm working on at the moment. (and the reason I have to watch all these films)Regardless of production value and cinematography war films are in essence fictionalisations of history, and so they will never be "true" to the event as it were. Yet the interesting and highly frustrating thing about war cinema as a genre is that it often claims to be the real deal. Think of all the critical acclaim bestowed on "Saving Private Ryan" and how it showed the Normandy beach landing "as if you were really there" etc. In fact one of the highest forms of praise a war film can get is that of realism. And from this idea of supposed realism (among other things) comes the concept of the film as a historical witness of sorts. Yet for all its realism there will always be a big discrepancy between the war film and war proper,simply because the former is a fictionalisation with all that entails.
The problems arise when we start to see the fictionalisation as the real deal, and that is a large part of what I'm working with at the moment. What happens when we turn history (specifically WWII) into fiction, and how does that affect our view of said history. It's quite fascinating and extremely frustrating.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-24 03:06 pm (UTC)I am thinking of this from a different direction - for me, it is very, very difficult to imagine that the Holocaust took place in color, because all the images are in black and white. And so, for example, when I went to Dachau, I experienced something very strange, in that my memories of my visit also seem to be in black and white and not in color, because color was not what I EXPECTED from there.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-23 11:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-24 10:49 am (UTC)As far as I know "thin red line" as a phrase has come to mean a military unit holding firm against attack. But yes, I think the historical precedence is tied up with the Wellington.
I seem to recall that Jones chose that the title based on a poem or a quote with yet another meaning implied, but now I cannot for the life of me find it. Arg...
And yeah, "Ryan" is definitely "meh" in places. maybe I wouldn't find the film quite so dull if it hadn't been such a huge phenomenon, but since WWII films and "Ryan" have become more or less synonymous that definitely increases the meh-factor.
Awww..Brad&Nate. You make everything better.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-24 04:22 am (UTC)Anyway, interesting post. :)
no subject
Date: 2008-10-24 07:40 am (UTC)Yeah, my reaction is a bit schizophrenic as well. I actually think the first part of the film is the most annoying because all the characters, plots, symbolism and cinematographic angles are introduced in such rapid succession that it all becomes a bit of a mess. There is also this extreme focus on "war-as-destruction-of-nature" and in one scene a shell shocked soldier picks up pieces of grass and comparing the grass to the fallen soldiers. So okay, nature equals man, I get that symbolism - but it just feels too much like symbolism first, story second. And then I become irritated.
But then there are scenes like the Japanese field hospital or Sean Penn's character talking about "There's no world but this one" - and they are GREAT. So confusing. Malick mindfuck - let me show you it. ;P
no subject
Date: 2008-10-24 09:05 am (UTC)I was always recommended "Thin Red Line" as "this is just like Saving Private Ryan" so I never got to watch it. :D
Out of the recent war films I really quite liked "Letters from Iwo Jima" . I also liked "Enemy at the gates" (which was particular interesting for me because of the perfect way Jude Law lives his character).
I think I have recommended this one before - "Come and See" is a my "this is the face of the war" film ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091251/ ) . Very hard to watch, set in Belarus.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-24 10:23 am (UTC)Oh I quite agree. After the Omaha scene the rest of the film feels a bit like its checking of war film tropes, complete with the medic that talks about home, and then is killed in the next scene. (never talk nostalgically about your home in war films, as it will only make you sympathetic to the audience and therefore suitable to be killed with the greatest amount of emotional impact. ;P)
Apart from the Omaha scene I also like the scene where the soldiers are searching through the dog-tags and the friends of the deceased walk by. That really hits home. The rest I'm very much "meh" about.
And I would definitely recommend watching Thin Red Line. I don't think it resembles Saving Private Ryan that much at all, and while I have issues with I still think its a film well worth seeing. Also the cinematography is beyond excellent, and the conflict of belief and moral between Sean Penn's character and Pvt. Witt is haunting.
I'd forgotten about "Enemy at the Gates" actually. I must try to rewatch that as well. I always adored Rachel Weiss' character there. And "Come and See" is noted. Thanks for the rec - I'm not sure I would have heard about it withou you. :D
no subject
Date: 2008-10-24 10:33 am (UTC)Oh, and I just found this quote by critic Michael O'Sullivan that I really liked:
"The Thin Red Line is a movie about creation growing out of destruction, about love where you'd least expect to find it and about angels – especially the fallen kind – who just happen to be men."
because that just captures the beauty and the oddness of the film for me.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-30 04:32 pm (UTC)