Tag Archives: WWII

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Dresden (2006) or Was the Bombing of Dresden a War Crime?

Dresden is a quite controversial German movie that has been criticised a lot. Shot for TV it is basically a very corny love story between a German nurse and an English fighter pilot.

I´m not going into any plot details since they are quite boring but still I do think this movie achieved something.

The love story takes place during the days before the bombing of Dresden starting February 13 1945 and ends with a depiction of the bombing.

This end part as well as  all the parts in the English Head Quarters from where the bombing was organised had me glued to the TV screen. The moral conflicts of the British to bomb what they knew to be one of the most beautiful European cities was shown very well. The atrocity of what is still called a war crime nowadays, is symbolised in the collapse of the famous Frauenkirche, one of the town´s landmarks  (reconstructed in 2008 as a symbol of hope and peace). The church withstood two days of bombing and finally collapsed on the second day.

The damage the bombing caused, the heatwaves, the firy wind… I think it is shown rather well however varnished with a lot of corny elements.

The end of the film shows actual footage, the re-inauguration of  the rebuilt Frauenkirche.

This movie, as flawed as it is, offers a lot of food for thought. How justified was it to systematically bomb a city like that, to kill so many and to destroy century old  architectural treasures? How is this different from the bombing of other cities?

Was it unavoidable? Was it a war crime? How did the pilots feel?

Further questions circle around the film makers´ choice to mix a corny romance with historical facts.

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Judgement at Nuremberg (1961) or A Truly Outstanding Legal Drama

Judgment at Nuremberg is a brilliant movie by Stanley Kramer. Outstanding actors, great pictures and a gripping story. Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, Marlene Dietrich, Montgomery Clift, Judy Garland and Maximilian Schell. They are all good, very good.

The movie´s setting is post-WWII occupied Germany.  It tells the story of the trial of 4 German Nazi judges in an American court. They are accused of being responsible for sterilization and exterminations.

Spencer Tracy stars as Judge Dan Haywood who is conducting the trial, Marlene Dietrich plays Mrs. Bertholt, the widow of an executed Nazi army officer. Burt Lancaster is one of the accused judges, Maximilian Schell his defendant. One of the most convincing performances is given by Montgomery Clift who plays the role of one of the judges´ victims. His  interrogation is so touchingly performed, makes you feel really uneasy.

The film follows Judge Haywood in the court room and outside where he tries to get the full picture by befriending Mrs. Bertholt and talking to his housekeepers, Mr. and Mrs. Halbestadt to find out what the German people  really knew. It seems as if each one´s personal history and concerns overshadowed the things that happened around them. And even though they lived so close to Dachau, Halbestadts pretend to have been ignorant of the camps.

During the trial the testimonies of the witnesses, supported by original footage of the concentration camps and the interrogation of the accused, completes the picture of the past horrors.

Judge Haywood must now establish if, in believing to serve their country, the accused did right or wrong. Do exceptional circumstances permit different moral criteria? Does the conviction to do the right thing exempt  from punishment?

If you want  Judge Haywood´s  answer to these questions and if you like to see  truly outstanding movies and great acting, watch this one  as soon as you can.

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Kokoda, 39th Battalion (2006) or The Australians´ Fight in the Pacific

Kokoda 39th Battalion is an Australian movie by Alister Grierson and tells another story that took place in the Pacific during WWII. Only this time we don´t watch Americans fight for the Australians (as they do, amongst oher things, in the miniseries The Pacific), but the Australians themselves. The Kokoda trail on Papua New Guinea is the main trail that leads directly to Port Moresby. By means of this trail the Japanese were planning to arrive at Port Moresby and from there an invasion of Australia would have been easy.

Obviously the Australians did everything to prevent this. The 39th battalion who is in the center of this movie was essentially a battalion of untrained volunteers. The central story focuses on two brothers who joined this battalion together.

The opening of the movie shows us a sequence of still lives that are very beautiful. Pictures of fauna and flora of the island. After that we see what has to be interpreted as premonition like dream of  Jack, one of the two brothers. This is somewhat an exaggeration of what the terrain was like. Same as in episode 4 of The Pacific there is a constant rain, and the terrain gets muddier and muddier. Jack slips and is almost drowning in mud. In the end he looks like some almost amphibian prehistoric creature. Those first ten minutes make you believe you might watch a film like The Thin Red Line with a lot of flashback elements, daydreams but that is, as you soon realise, not the case. From that moment on Kokoda turns into Hamburger Hill, meaning heavy jungle infantry combat.

The men are surrounded by Japanese soldiers whose camouflage is so much more efficient than their own, whose fighting experience is outstanding, and whose cruelty, as the movie wants to make us believe, is beyond imagination.

This was one of the movies that made me think again and again: Why war? Why did that happen? Why did it have to happen. The efforts of the Australians seem so futile, that even though they won in the end, there is nothing noble in all this. It´s just horrible and hard to watch.

I first thought that this was an average movie but the overall atmosphere is so intense, the desperate fight of these badly trained men is so well depicted that I think it´s quite a good movie that I would recommend you´d watch. And, most important, the pictures of the dense forest and the instances of cruelty in the middle of the jungle aren´t easily forgotten and stay in your mind long after you´ve watched it.

Yes, it´s biased, the Japanese are shown as beastly monsters but still.

Furthermore it tells a quite soulful story of the deep bond between brothers.

DVD on Amazon

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The Man Who Cried (2000)

This is such a gorgeous movie by Sally Potter,  starring Johnny Depp, Cate Blanchett, Christina Ricci and John Turturro.

Love story and survival story. Tale about friendship, ode to music. A very rich movie with beautiful pictures and an extraordinary soundtrack.

It reminds us that the jews were not the only ones who have  been persecuted and exterminated during WWII.

We tend to forget that the gypsies were also victims of the holocaust.

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Is There Such A Thing as a Bad War Movie? Windtalkers (2002)

 

This is one of my worst war movie experiences and probably even one of the worst movies in general. Already under normal circumstances (meaning when he does some decent acting of which he is capable) I’m not really a Nicolas Cage fan but in this movie his acting is frankly ridiculous. This is a parody of suffering and you don’t believe one second that his character is in pain. Definitely not from shell shock. Maybe one would believe it if someone informed you he had a bad case of piles. I had been told that this is not a good movie, although it has his followers, but I didn’t imagine it could be this flawed. There’s bad acting, a lot of explosions that seem to happen for no reason and a stupid plot twist when the Indian code talker plays a Japanese and enters the Japanese  dugout with Nicolas Cage’s character in tow. Unconvincing? Embarrassing!

Enough slagging off. What is it about and why did I not listen to the ones who told me? Purely because I’m interested in the history of the North American Indians. Apparently they had successfully been used as code talkers during WWII. A valuable asset to the American Army. Codes and code breakers  are a vital element in any war (nicely shown in Enigma). Windtalkers tells the story of two Indian code talkers and their counterparts or body guards so to say during the battle of Saipan in the Pacific. But this is only what the Indians are told they are. On a deeper level those two men (one the insufferable Nicolas Cage and the other the convincing  – as always- Christian Slater) are not only guardians  but ultimately they could become executors. Since it would be fatal should the code get into the hands of the enemy,  the men must see that those Indians are not taken prisoners under any circumstances and are  killed in the event of  imminent capture.  This creates a lot of moral tensions. Would they really do it?

The only good bit was the rites you see the Indians perform. What a pity. Had John Woo  managed to tell us something like Glory does about the African-American soldiers’ participation in the Civil War… What a movie this would have been…well…he didn’t.