I watched a movie last night that astonished me quite a bit. It was gut-wrenching and fabulously good and has managed what none before did manage, it has entered my Top 10. The question is now, which one of the 10 will I kick out? Of course you are wondering which one managed to enter my Top 10. Maybe the film stills will give you the answer. If not, you have to wait until my review is ready. Hopefully that will be tomorrow.
A while back one of my readers, Cliff, suggested to do a post on war movies that won the Academy Award for Best Film. I finally collected them and am going to share the list with you. I must say I was amazed to see how many there are. There are of course a few I have never seen, but many are very familiar. Out of my Top 10 there is only one, Platoon. The posters I added for you are from the first and the last so far to win the award, Wings and The Hurt Locker. The list shows the year when the movie won which is not always identical with the year it was produced. You will see easily that there are not many infantry combat movies on that list, that’s probably why there is only one of my Top 10 List (that you can see here) as I chose mainly combat movies. Still it is an interesting list and it puts me in the mood to re-watch some of them. It seems to be as if the 90ies were THE war movie decade. I wonder why. Any ideas?
Wings (1928)
All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
Cavalcade (1933)
Casablanca (1943)
The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
From Here to Eternity (1953)
Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
Ben Hur (1959)
Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
Patton (1970)
The Deer Hunter (1978)
Platoon (1986)
Dances with Wolves (1990)
Schindler’s List (1993)
Forrest Gump (1994)
Braveheart (1995)
The English Patient (1996)
Gladiator (2000)
The Hurt Locker (2009)
Maybe 90% of my readers are yawning now. I am very sorry but since I have seen The Great Escape for the first time only recently I had no clue. I thought it was basically the story of an escape, which it is, of course. The scene of Steve McQueen on a bike was very familiar as well (one of those memorable movie scenes), but apart from that: zero. I never heard it mentioned anywhere that it is based on the true story of a war crime. Are there any others out there like me who haven’t seen it yet? Maybe. For their sake I am not going to reveal why it is the story of a war crime. Just telling you, that it is.
Apart from that? Did I like it? Obviously when everybody tells you how great a movie is you start to expect something and if that is not what you get then you are slightly disappointed. So I was slightly disappointed. I didn’t expect such a summer camp like joyousness in the beginning. I rather expected something in the vein of The Colditz Story. Something a tad bleaker and grimmer. The feel of The Great Escape is much more adventure story than war movie. Plus English actors who play Englishmen who pretend to be Germans and get away with it despite their heavy accents are not the height of realism.
What is my final conclusion? No, you are wrong, I don’t write it off but I will have to watch it again without the weird expectations that are never going to be fulfilled. A proper review will be due by the time I have watched it for the second time. After all its a classic, with a fabulous all-star cast and it’s just bad luck I never watched it as a kid when it was on TV cause everyone who watched it then has the fondest memories. It’s definitely nice to have fond childhood movie memories. My only childhood war movie memory is A Bridge Too Far. Yeah well, not a bad one either, right?
I only recently saw that there was a parents guide to almost every movie describing in different paragraphs how explicit/graphic etc. a movie is and if or if not it can be watched with children. I read some of them and found many quite hilarious. Some movies come across in such an odd way seen like this…
I didn’t want to simply give you an example. Instead, let’s test your knowledge. Below you see the parents guide of a famous war movie. Guess which one it is.
There is reference to soldiers raping/attempting to rape some villagers
A man talks about how he loves pussy
In one scene, in the background, you can see a poster of a fully nude woman.
A man reads Playboy.
A man holds a small statue of a nude woman.
As this is a war film, there is graphic war violence throughout the picture.
Examples are a man is shot in the lungs and has trouble breathing while oozing blood. A man is piecing his internals back in. Many men are shot and killed, wounded, and screaming. A brief scene of taking wounded men back to an Aid zone, though it is a short scene there are many sitings of wounded men, dead mutilated bodies, and medics covered in blood. A scene of torturing a Vietnamese soldier ends in much blood shed (brains are implied but not seen).
A rape scene which is quickly ended by interruption.
The most disturbing scene is where the troops raid a village: a man with a mental illness gets beaten to death with the back of a gun and then they continue to shoot his distraught mother. Several adults and children get blown up with grenades (very graphic). A man shoots a woman in front of her son and grandaughter. He then put a gun to the head of the grandaughter, to torture the woman’s son. He nearly shoots the girl before his is interrupted.
Contains frequent strong language, including blasphemy, the ‘f’ word, and many uses of sh*t, a**, b*tch, and 1 use of the ‘n’ slur.
Alcohol, cigarette smoking and marijuana smoking are all depicted. It is implied that doing “shit” will wear you away from your worries.
a scene in which a Vietnamese villager is being tortured by soldiers, especially the conclusion, may be very disturbing to many viewers
one theme of the film is that of some of the soldiers who have been there for as short as two weeks going insane with bloodlust and mental visions. this may be disturbing to many viewers
Now, any ideas?
The French movie La chambre des officiers aka The Officers’ Ward may very well be one of the most moving and shocking war movies I have ever seen. I felt sick twice, I cringed endlessly and it made me really sad. It is a masterpiece. An absolutely brilliant anti-war movie. If you thought Born on the 4th of July was horrible then you haven’t seen this one.
The movie is based on Marc Dugain’s novel La chambre des officiers aka The officers’ ward and tells the story of the young lieutenant Adrien. At the beginning of WWI Adrien is a very handsome young officer. A piece of shrapnel rips half his jaw off. He will spend the rest of the war, a full five years, at the Val-de-Grâce Hospital in Paris. At this hospital they only cure men with facial wounds, burns etc. It is like a freak show only these are human beings.
During the beginning of the movie we never see Adrien. We only see the reaction of those around him. The doctors’, nurses’ and patients’. The profound pity in these faces says more than actually seeing him. Since he cannot talk anymore, we hear his thoughts. The moment when he realises that his face is a gaping hole is so awful…
During the five years at the hospital he fights great pain, despair, horror, suicidal thoughts. Together with the other mutilated officers they try to stay alive and become human beings again.
The music is very intense (Arvo Pärt and Wagner, admittedly the second is a bit strange) and underlines the atmosphere of this saddest of war movies. Funny enough there is also beauty. The beauty in the relationships between the wounded. And the beauty between Adrien and a very gentle and loving nurse. There is also a brothel scene towards the end that is not only lighter in tone but even in a melancholic way funny.
This is a very thought-provoking, must-see, 5/5 star movie.
I only found the French trailer, I’m sorry.
All About War Movies 