Tag Archives: Movies

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I Once Saw a Movie…

My mother had a favourite war romance, a movie she liked more than any other. When I was a kid it was on TV once and we watched it together. I wasn’t as taken with the film as she was but thinking of her, I often thought of that movie as well. Since she passed away, I couldn’t ask her the name of the movie. All I remembered was that two people met during an air raid and that the woman was forced into prostitution later. And something about a bridge. I asked many people whether they knew the film. Nobody did. I couldn’t remember the title, nor the actors, nor the end. However I was 100% sure it was a WWII movie and pretty sure it was British.

Well, as the picture above may indicate, I’ve found it meanwhile. It was the US black and white WWI and WWII set movie Waterloo Bridge.  The prostitution element is quite important and it stayed with me. However with that alone I wouldn’t have found the movie. I did a laborious search including movies – war – bridges. Since “bridge” was part of the title, it was more or less easy to find it. Unfortunately that’s not always how it goes.

More than one movie someone is looking for will never be found. There are many reasons. The most important being that memory plays tricks. We think we saw a German movie but it was American with a German point of view. Or Russian. Very often we only remember one little scene. The scene is what stayed with us, it impressed us and has an importance in our memory that it may not even have had in the movie.

Why am I writing all this?

I get a lot of e-mails. E-mails by people who are looking for a movie. A movie they have seen. A movie someone else has seen. A movie they have heard of. They hope that I will be able to either find it or help them find it. I have to admit that I often fail. Because I like to help, it frustrates me when I’m not able to find a movie and I know that people are extremely disappointed.

On the other hand it’s so great when I manage to find a movie. Funny enough, it’s hardly ever after the initial e-mail but only after I wrote back and ask a few specific questions that we are successful. Sometimes my questions even help people find the movie on their own.

And here is what is really important: You may think you have forgotten most of the movie but you haven’t. You remember far more but you don’t think it’s important. For you it’s important that someone sang a song in a sequence, while this isn’t even a side story but just a brief moment. But trust me, you do remember a lot more.

If you are looking for a movie try to think about the below questions first and include the answers in your mail.

Which war?

What language?

Was it a subtitled or a dubbed movie?

What country of origin?

Black and white?

Any idea how old?

Who was the main character?

Famous actors or not so famous actors?

Where was it set? Countryside or town?

What season and weather conditions?

Was it a “real” war movie or rather a war themed movie?

It is very rare that people look for combat movies and that makes it even more difficult because there are so many war themed movies out there. To get the (sub) genre right, can be crucial.

If you really don’t remember a lot, don’t hesitate to write anyway. It may still work.  Not long ago someone only remembered that there was a sequence in a movie in which a pair of boots was changing their owner. The very same scene had impressed me as well and the movie – All Quiet on the Western Front (the 30s original, the scene is not in the remake) – was found.

I still haven’t re-watched Waterloo Bridge but I would like to. I’m pretty sure I would enjoy it much more now than when I was a child.

Are there any movies you have been desperately looking for?

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Poll Results – Is Black Hawk Down Too Combat Intense?

More than a year ago I asked the question on this blog whether  Black Hawk Down was too combat intense. Someone had made this comment and I was astonished because I thought the intensity of the combat in Black Hawk Down was one of the reasons why it was such an extremely powerful movie. I checked the poll a few times in the beginning and the forgot about it. The other day I had a look and the result is interesting.

26 people have answered the question. 50% think that it isn’t too combat intense, 13% however thought, that yes, indeed it was too intense. Another 20% thought that it should be even more intense and the remaining people didn’t care.

I’m still surprised anyone would think it is too combat intense but maybe we would have to know what they mean. Black Hawk Down depicts the Battle of Mogadishu, an army operation that went seriously wrong. The result of the operation shook everyone who knew about it or who was involved. The special units deployed got under heavy fire and faced an incredible aggression. They weren’t only fighting other soldiers but a huge, armed mob. Depicting something like this as realistically as possible requires intensity.

I would say, that from the point of view of  a soldier who was under heavy fire, I guess, it’s not intense as nothing can equal the real thing. But maybe for someone purely watching it, it could be too intense, meaning, “too intense to watch”.

In any case, I will check back on the poll from time to time and keep you posted.

A little question for you. Do you think there is any other war movie which depicts such intense combat scenes? I think some of the more recent South Korean war movies I watched do but can’t think of an older one as intense as this.

You can find the original post with the poll here. Please vote, if you haven’t done so already.

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Waltz with Bashir aka Vals Im Bashir (2008)

The Israeli animated movie Waltz with Bashir aka Vals Im Bashir is this rare thing – a really surprising movie. On top of that it’s well done, original, interesting and has a great score by Max Richter (Shutter Island).

In Waltz with Bashir Ari Folman tells his own story. He was in Lebanon in 1982, fighting with the Israeli army. At the beginning of the movie we see a pack of dogs, running in the night. It’s a very haunting, eerie image and we learn soon that it’s from a nightmare form one of Ari’s friends who was fighting in Lebanon at the same time. Although not capable of shooting people, he had to shoot the dogs who guarded the villages at night. Those dogs have come back, after far more than 20 years and haunt him in his dreams. One evening in a bar he tells Ari about it. They had never spoken about the war before and Ari had never thought of it much. To his great dismay he realizes that he doesn’t even remember anything. It’s as if it had never taken place.

After this conversation with his friend, he dreams of the war for the first time. The pictures seem to be part of a memory that he cannot really place. It looks like he is remembering a massacre in a refugee camp.

The conversation and the subsequent dream are the reason why Ari thinks, he needs to recover his memory, needs to talk to old friends, to comrades and officers. He travels to Holland and many other places, looking for people who were in Lebanon with him. He speaks to psychologists and learns a lot about the way how memory works, about dissociation and how traumatic experiences are suppressed.

It is highly fascinating to watch how he recovers his memory. Fascinating and sad as he finds out so many horrible things. It’s interesting that more than one person recovers their memory or snaps out of a state of dissociation when thinking of dying and killed animals.

What adds further complexity to the story is the fact that Ari Folman’s father was in Auschwitz. It becomes apparent after a while that the horrors his father has described to him are somehow linked to his suppressed meories and  once he recovers the memory of the war he has been in, he remembers everything else as well.

During the last five minutes the movie suddenly turns into a documentary. It is no longer an animated picture but we see original footage of the war in Lebanon.

This is the second animated war movie I have seen (the other one was Grave of the Fireflies) and both were excellent. It’s a medium that works extremely well for this topic. 

Waltz with Bashir is highly recommendable. It contains a moving and profound anti-war statement and a very interesting exploration of memory.

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“Is Platoon a War Movie?”

“Is Platoon a war movie?”

No, I’m not being funny. I have been asked exactly this question a while ago by someone I told about this blog. It was a man in his late forties. He wasn’t really sure what I meant when I was saying I wrote a blog about war movies. It’s a genre he isn’t familiar with and he finds it highly dubious. He asked me this question to fully understand what it was that I was reviewing and writing about. Guess if he had been a bit younger the question would have been either “Is Saving Private Ryan a war movie?” or “Is The Hurt Locker a war movie?”.

What I’m getting at here is that there is such a ting as THE war movie. A movie that is known far beyond the borders of the genre and by an audience that will normally not watch war movies. I don’t think it is a coincidence that he chose Platoon. Platoon and Apocalypse Now used to be the exemplary movies whenever people were talking about war movies, whether they were aficionados of the genre or they belonged to those who despise the genre.   

It is hard for someone like me who has seen a lot of war movies to try to find out which is the movie that comes to mind first upon hearing the expression “war movie”. Now that I’m writing this post it’s pretty hard to think of any other war movie than Platoon. Still, for some weird reasons, the war movies which seem to be the most representative of the genre for me are Vietnam movies and that’s why, I guess, I would think of Platoon. This has nothing to do with “favourite movie”. A favourite movie could be far less typical.

How about you, which is the movie you think of first, which is the one that embodies the genre for you?