here's a brief list of (american) war films that i believe give a
great sense of 1) the experience of battle 2) the ambiguities & nuances
of the causes/consequences of war, and 3) some historical insight
(and also some very fine cinema as well):
They Were Expendable
Pork Chop Hill
The Mountain Road
Verboten!
Steel Helmet
Major Dundee
The Big Parade
as i look at this list , i notice that many of these films deal with
Korea or were made in the post-Korea/pre Vietnam era. i think some of
the finest hollywood war films were made about the Korean war (and were
allowed to be made) perhaps because the war itself was a very
contradictory, conflicted and murky undertaking . additionally much of
the patriotic fervor of many WWII productions allowed these later
films to "slip through the cracks" of typical propaganda. also many of
the film's makers had battle experience and were more questioning of
the purposes of war.
the human experience of battle and the consequences of militarism are
combined in these films in ways that did not necessarily have a
political agenda (which happened in most of the post -vietnam pictures -
with the possible exception of the original and quite fine rambo film,
First Blood). the "patriotic doubt" that viewers had to take away from
these movies was quietly metamorphosed in to simplistic /preachy fare
such as Coming Home or the Deer Hunter or ironized into bombastic
material like Patton (tho still a very good film in my opinion) or
Apocalypse Now (an over-rated tho interesting picture in its many
variations).
michael "didn't care much for saving private ryan" catolico
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