Posted on 02/20/2019 1:13:30 PM PST by libstripper
It should go without saying that if you’ve never been to war, you can’t pretend to know what it’s like. Yet for those of us who never have been, the movies have created our image of war; they’re the closest thing to it that most of us are likely to get. I’ll never forget the first time I saw the “Ride of the Valkyries” helicopter attack sequence in “Apocalypse Now.” I was a college newspaper intern who’d talked my way into the film’s American premiere on Aug. 15, 1979, at the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York. The movie, in a word, was shocking. The sound of Jim Morrison singing “This is the end…” told you, from the outset, that the stakes were about something larger than one disastrous American military morass, and by the time the helicopter massacre arrived, the film had become a trip and a nightmare at the same time, one that let you feel the adrenaline rush of killing (which was rather obscene, but a rush nonetheless) and along with it the sting of death.
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Excellent movie. Saw it 12/27.
Highly recommended.
PING!
Go see this movie if you can. Stay past the credits for the 30 minute follow-up by Jackson. It’s worth it.
I saw this last month during its two day limited release.
Jackson and his team worked miracles with old film - not only colorizing it, but correcting speed and filling in gaps where old film had scratched or decayed. He also added sound in a few instances where he knew they could get the sound correct and be honest with history.
The film was not particularly gory, and it wasn’t historical in that it didn’t mention dates, battles, troop movements, etc... Using the available film, it merely traced the average soldiers journey from recruit, to training, to deployment, to battle, to return home.
What struck me was the faces and demeanor of the soldiers. To me they appeared much more innocent, naive and child-like than people of our age. I figure that they were all born in the late 19th century, in rural places, in a much simpler time.
The comments are interesting.
Overwhelmingly they are on the order of: “I don’t like Trump either, but enough with the Trump Derangement Syndrome inserting him into everything.”
If you put the word Trump in any headline, you get lots more clicks.
it’s eerie to hear their stiff-upper-lip attitude of gung-go good cheer
I viewed this movie with a friend, who is an Army veteran. Most of the film is really behind the scenes kind of stuff. Carrying a large movie camera, where you need one hand to turn the film, isn’t something that you readily haul around when you are working your way through barbed wire in no-mans-land. There were no aerial scenes. However, the segment on how they put the film together was amazing. No detail was too small. They looked at the uniforms to find out where the unit was from. They would then go to that local to have the film dubbed. A Brit would know what someone from that area would sound like and they wanted it to be as authentic as possible.
It's an integral component of the psychosis.
Two possible cures: epiphany or death.
No Hollywood product can match the experience of combat, but this Kiwi attempt is damned good. Using actual footage and adding actual sounds of incoming artillery sent a shiver down my spine, only the smell was missing. It was an emotional experience.
Saving Private Ryan certainly get high marks for realistic combat scenes. For me, the night attack in Platoon came close to being a personal memory and when I saw the tracers in Forrest Gump, I got the willies. Small details makes all the difference and that was what Peter Jackson did best. Film can’t recreate the most shocking elements of combat, but I can’t imagine that this one will be topped for a long time.
This is a must see, but it is not for everyone. I saw several couples who couldn’t make it to the end, it was just too powerful.
THAT really stood out to me, too. Hurt my heart to realize how a whole generation of men was introduced to the horrors of modern warfare, and given little recognition for their sacrifices.
Made me understand why there was so much reluctance of the next generation to enter another war.
—yes—the movie a “must see”-—the reviewer is a sad example of the “never Trump” syndrome without a lick of of sense-—
We watched it twice last month. We went with a group of friends and loved it so much that we took more friends with us the second time.
It was eerie to see it in 3D, but not sure I would recommend it. The First World War documentary series on PBS captured it better I thought. Sad to see how these guys were treated when they got back to Great Britain. Different breed.
The movie was not political... the reviewer said nothing that tied the Trump administration to anything. The headline does not make any sense.
Fantastic movie, Mrs. Yo-Yo and I saw it and heartily recommend it.
I found the 3D was a real enhancement. None of us can really understand the experience of trench warfare in 1914-1918, but this production did a better job than anything else that I have seen.
I saw it and was a bit let down. I did like but I expected a more. Seemed much of the movie was just reusing colorized bits of film showing different faces while the oral history played.
It’s a very good movie, incredible restoration of 100 year old film. Some of the visuals are absolutely spectacular, like a slow motion image of a German mine exploding—stunning! The audio of the WWI veterans speaking was actually recorded in the 1960’s, you’re listening to real veterans talk.
This movie will not teach you much about the how’s and why’s of WWII, it’s not a true military history of the war. What it will tell you about is the grim, filthy, bloody drudgery in the lives of everyday foot soldiers in the trenches on the Western Front.
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