This film has been under production since 2001. It is scheduled to run now because it is finished.
I just finished reading the book that has been released to coincide with the film’s release. It is powerful and gripping. I can’t wait to see the film.
No, I don’t think war films should show “patriotic and heroic” death. Going to war requires patriotism and some reasonable degree of heroism, but death is never anything but awful. That’s why we should never, ever go to war unless we are certain we have no other choice and we exert whatever energy and resources are required to win with the least possible loss of life.
World War II was a truly brutal experience for those who fought it. My Dad was a navigator on a B-17 flying out of southern England in 1944-45. He had a horrible scar on his forehead from a wound he received and I am named after his co-pilot who got his badly shot up airplane back to England after the pilot was killed and my Dad and half the crew were wounded. I never, ever heard my Dad utter a word about his combat experiences other than to explain to me how I got my name when I was 8 years old.
We are going to be lucky enough to hear some of those stories from men like my dad beginning Sunday. If it is as good as the book has been, it will be great.
“No, I don’t think war films should show “patriotic and heroic” death.”
War films just have to show what really happened.
That’s enough to fill any screen.
It may be apocryphal, but suppossedly a US General had a terse interchange
with director/actor John Huston at a cocktail party.
The general says “Huston, I hear you’ve just wrapped a war film and
it’s not very patriotic, maybe even anti-war!”
Huston replied “General, the day I make a PRO-War film, I hope you
will shoot me.”