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If there is one particular cinematic genre that I love more than any other, it’s the war genre. One of my favorite films as a child was The Dirty Dozen. I had probably seen it fifteen times by the time I was twelve. Another great war movie I loved as a kid, and still do by the way, is The Great Escape, which consequently made Steve McQueen my first movie idol. None of that matters, of course, I just felt like sharing it.
What I’d like is to have a discussion about war movies. What war movie is your all time favorite, and why? What is it about your particular favorite that makes it your favorite? We already have a generic thread about war movie favorites that, coincidentally; I created when I was still new here. But it was only a list thread…BORING! So my idea is this: Let’s discuss all of our own personal favorites, and explain what it is about that particular film that speaks to you. What does it say?
I’ll take the initiative with my personal all time favorite, Saving Private Ryan. Now I know that a lot of people give this movie flak because it’s actually pure fiction, but I think it really encapsulates the real emotions some soldiers, during war time, deal with. Case in point, Cpl. Timothy Upham (Jeremy Davies). Now Davies’ character really captures the fear that a new soldier, no matter how gifted, crazy, or emasculate, he or she may be, quite perfectly. This is a man that is terrified. Terrified of dying, and of the act of killing. Why would a once journalist ever put any real thought into taking someone’s life? And why would we assume that just because he’s thrust into a situation where he’s being shot at, that he has within himself, any capacity at all to point a weapon and pull the trigger, snuffing out someone else’s life?
I looked through his eyes and was transported back to my first day in Iraq, during the first Gulf War. I remembered the pure terror I felt at what I was about to be thrust into. My M.O.S. in the United States Army was Cavalry Scout, later trained in Air Assault. Basically, I was dropped with my platoon, well into enemy territory in order to scout out the enemy, and engage in combat if discovered, or when, and if, any target of opportunity presented itself. Now, if my life were a piece of fiction, the first engagement I was involved with would have been chocked full of bravery and valor, yet it wasn’t. I was so scared that, later, I needed to change my jockeys. That may sound funny, but it’s not. It’s real.
Az Zubayr is a city of above average size, and though the US Navy had pounded it repeatedly for weeks before my platoon was sent into it, it still remained a hub of resistance. Of course, we didn’t know that for sure, hence my Company’s involvement. To make a long story short, I and my friends were suddenly under fire. At one point during a pitched and fierce battle, that somehow only lasted a tad over 30 minutes, I was forced to kill. I didn’t do it as automatically as promised by my Drill Instructor back in the states. It was when I saw a good friend take a hit in his side, that I was finally released from my self-induced stupor, and fought back for their lives and mine. I screamed, I pissed, and I screamed some more. I lived through it obviously, but not until the damage to my psyche was done. After the battle was over we counted bodies: Allies 0, Iraqi’s 34. What commenced within myself after that was, to say the least, dramatic. I had killed not just one, but three human beings by myself. Two with my rifle, and one in close combat using my bayonet. Let me just say this, killing someone without the aid of a rifle is incredibly intense. Not only did I end a life, essentially bare handed, but also I had survived unscathed! From that point on, I was on autopilot, and by the time there was no more fighting (outwardly allowed or not), I had killed a great number of people. I had killed from a distance with my M-60, and shot men in the back of the head execution style. However, the terror never left me.
My point with all that is this, Saving Private Ryan captured, to the tee, what it is like to live and die in a war. Cpl. Upham is, in my own humble opinion, the epitome of what a real soldier is, at least during the beginning of their war time experience. I really identified with his character, and had never before seen such a true depiction. I was stunned and gratified that the people that Steven Speilberg hired as WarTime Consultants captured the true essence of debilitating fear. Upham failed miserably, and if he were a real human being, would be haunted for the rest of his life. I actually see suicide in Upham’s future, making his character all the more poetic for me.
There are three other major scenes in the movie, that quite literally, tore me apart. The first being Pvt. Irwin Wade’s (Giovanni Ribisi) death scene. There were a number of times I heard grown men call out to their Mama’s, at least I assumed they were. It was Iraqi soldiers crying it while they died, it’s heartbreaking regardless whoever is crying it. The second is Pvt. Stanley Mellish’s (Adam Goldberg) death scene. Now that one makes me cringe and want to cry out. It was so realistic it was frightening. And the fact that Upham is just outside the door with salvation only a trigger away makes it all the more distressing. The third, and last, scene that tears my heart to shreds is the famous, “Tell me I’m a good man” line said by James Ryan (Harrison Young) at the end of the film. What post-war soldier doesn’t, at the very least, say that to himself? I know I have dozens of times. I accidentally killed a child while in Iraq, and it wakes me up at night still. War nightmares are actually quite indescribable, so I won’t bother trying. Needless to say, I often ask myself, “Am I a good man?”.
What I’d like is to have a discussion about war movies. What war movie is your all time favorite, and why? What is it about your particular favorite that makes it your favorite? We already have a generic thread about war movie favorites that, coincidentally; I created when I was still new here. But it was only a list thread…BORING! So my idea is this: Let’s discuss all of our own personal favorites, and explain what it is about that particular film that speaks to you. What does it say?
I’ll take the initiative with my personal all time favorite, Saving Private Ryan. Now I know that a lot of people give this movie flak because it’s actually pure fiction, but I think it really encapsulates the real emotions some soldiers, during war time, deal with. Case in point, Cpl. Timothy Upham (Jeremy Davies). Now Davies’ character really captures the fear that a new soldier, no matter how gifted, crazy, or emasculate, he or she may be, quite perfectly. This is a man that is terrified. Terrified of dying, and of the act of killing. Why would a once journalist ever put any real thought into taking someone’s life? And why would we assume that just because he’s thrust into a situation where he’s being shot at, that he has within himself, any capacity at all to point a weapon and pull the trigger, snuffing out someone else’s life?
I looked through his eyes and was transported back to my first day in Iraq, during the first Gulf War. I remembered the pure terror I felt at what I was about to be thrust into. My M.O.S. in the United States Army was Cavalry Scout, later trained in Air Assault. Basically, I was dropped with my platoon, well into enemy territory in order to scout out the enemy, and engage in combat if discovered, or when, and if, any target of opportunity presented itself. Now, if my life were a piece of fiction, the first engagement I was involved with would have been chocked full of bravery and valor, yet it wasn’t. I was so scared that, later, I needed to change my jockeys. That may sound funny, but it’s not. It’s real.
Az Zubayr is a city of above average size, and though the US Navy had pounded it repeatedly for weeks before my platoon was sent into it, it still remained a hub of resistance. Of course, we didn’t know that for sure, hence my Company’s involvement. To make a long story short, I and my friends were suddenly under fire. At one point during a pitched and fierce battle, that somehow only lasted a tad over 30 minutes, I was forced to kill. I didn’t do it as automatically as promised by my Drill Instructor back in the states. It was when I saw a good friend take a hit in his side, that I was finally released from my self-induced stupor, and fought back for their lives and mine. I screamed, I pissed, and I screamed some more. I lived through it obviously, but not until the damage to my psyche was done. After the battle was over we counted bodies: Allies 0, Iraqi’s 34. What commenced within myself after that was, to say the least, dramatic. I had killed not just one, but three human beings by myself. Two with my rifle, and one in close combat using my bayonet. Let me just say this, killing someone without the aid of a rifle is incredibly intense. Not only did I end a life, essentially bare handed, but also I had survived unscathed! From that point on, I was on autopilot, and by the time there was no more fighting (outwardly allowed or not), I had killed a great number of people. I had killed from a distance with my M-60, and shot men in the back of the head execution style. However, the terror never left me.
My point with all that is this, Saving Private Ryan captured, to the tee, what it is like to live and die in a war. Cpl. Upham is, in my own humble opinion, the epitome of what a real soldier is, at least during the beginning of their war time experience. I really identified with his character, and had never before seen such a true depiction. I was stunned and gratified that the people that Steven Speilberg hired as WarTime Consultants captured the true essence of debilitating fear. Upham failed miserably, and if he were a real human being, would be haunted for the rest of his life. I actually see suicide in Upham’s future, making his character all the more poetic for me.
There are three other major scenes in the movie, that quite literally, tore me apart. The first being Pvt. Irwin Wade’s (Giovanni Ribisi) death scene. There were a number of times I heard grown men call out to their Mama’s, at least I assumed they were. It was Iraqi soldiers crying it while they died, it’s heartbreaking regardless whoever is crying it. The second is Pvt. Stanley Mellish’s (Adam Goldberg) death scene. Now that one makes me cringe and want to cry out. It was so realistic it was frightening. And the fact that Upham is just outside the door with salvation only a trigger away makes it all the more distressing. The third, and last, scene that tears my heart to shreds is the famous, “Tell me I’m a good man” line said by James Ryan (Harrison Young) at the end of the film. What post-war soldier doesn’t, at the very least, say that to himself? I know I have dozens of times. I accidentally killed a child while in Iraq, and it wakes me up at night still. War nightmares are actually quite indescribable, so I won’t bother trying. Needless to say, I often ask myself, “Am I a good man?”.
__________________
"Today, war is too important to be left to politicians. They have neither the time, the training, nor the inclination for strategic thought. I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids."
"Today, war is too important to be left to politicians. They have neither the time, the training, nor the inclination for strategic thought. I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids."
Last edited by LordSlaytan; 05-14-03 at 01:53 AM.
There are many memorable scenes in it but there is one that comes to mind right now and that I think it's brilliant. It hasn't much to do with anything, but at one point when a car with officers drive up to the military headquarters (It was a while since I saw it), a horse gets frightened by the car. I am absolutely sure that this scene is to symbolize the clash between oldfashioned and modern warfare that made World War I so catastrophal. Do you know which scene I mean?