Memorial Day movies to view

SOME MOVIES TO VIEW
By Alex Ness
May 22, 2022

I am doing well but have found deadlines and life issues swallowing my time. Enjoy a look at some films to view for the Memorial Day holiday week.

As a historian I find most movies regarding battles, war, or events involving the military to rarely be factual, however much the movie might be well made and interesting. Braveheart is easily the worst as it ignores the known truths, and creates absolute false narratives. The film Pearl Harbor was ridiculously bad with factual truth, and it is made worse for the falsehoods since the many aspects of the war are known.  To get them wrong when it is an event within two generations ago, is a slap in the face.  The movies I've chosen are all great films, and however much they error in the truth, or facts presented, none are known for the mistakes, rather, they are so good otherwise it becomes forgivable. By the way, there are some spoilers are present here, but if a movie is 50 years old, you should not have waited so long to find out what was so damn good about these movies.

Heaven and Earth is a Japanese film about the historic confrontation between two men and their armies.  It shows in lavish detail and accurate imagery how enormous the collision of men was, the impact of the events, and the politics bound within.  It has subtitles, so it might lose something for those people who dislike subtitled works.  But I'd rather have great subtitles than dubbed in the language, poorly.

Glory broke my heart.  When I first saw it, and each time thereafter, human slavery and the power of the human soul to overcome such, made this movie poignant, powerful and significant in showing that without the leadership of some, the willing sacrifice of others, and constant efforts, the political and social system of slavery would not have been overcome.

Paths of Glory is a Stanley Kubrick masterpiece. It features the event of war during the First World War, when French commanders ordered an assault that was almost suicidal for those ordered to act. The commanders held for themselves a sense of entitled safety, knowing they didn't have to sacrifice themselves. When the events fall apart and accusations fly, the world is shown to be madness, where the arbitrary nature of the accusations and injustice makes the failure even worse, and it was bad to begin with.  No one seeing this could ever assume leadership cares for its men on a personal level, only as pawns to use in a pursuit of glory. The movie is a statement that is anti war by presenting war as it really could be. There are films that could be argued, falsely portray war, or present it accurately, but are better seen as adventures that war.  Paths of Glory is a film to watch for truth and nothing else.

Lawrence of Arabia is a movie that might not be entirely accurate, for the story of the man considered might have held his own beliefs, ideas and desires to himself. The titular character,  T.E. Lawrence's own work was famously impossible for any editor to with, using idiosyncratic spellings, phrasing and obtuse imagery. But the movie succeeds brilliant and showing why Lawrence's work with the Arab armies were able to overcome the Turks, with the aid from the British, and how promises made, could prove to an idealist to be broken far too easily.  I love this film, but I have no belief that it is accurate.  But I think it was accurate enough considering the subject's reluctance to be fully understood by anyone, even those close to him.

I read the book Das Boot.  I was looking forward to the movie, and when I saw it, I was maybe one of three attendees, as the small city in Wisconsin wasn't too keen to view a movie about the enemy's view of war, and the life and death of German submariners in the Second World War.  It was a magnificent film telling the story of dangerous lives and futile efforts of a u-boat and crew fighting against an enemy that was learning how to fight them, and developing an unbreakable advantage.  It was a grueling 2 or 3 hours, and it was a great film.

The Thin Red Line is written by an author who had experienced combat in the Pacific, and had also written From Here to Eternity, a film also about soldiers, but primarily only the run up to Pearl Harbor.  But the Thin Red Line shows that the dog soldiers who had to wage war against the Japanese soldiers facing them, with generals seeking fame and glory, lives where trust and hope were barely possible in the weariness, constant fight.  Friends help each other, so do allies in the fight, but the conflict is so overwhelming, it grinds the soldier down to a threadbare soul. Some leave the island with no more hope, no more soul, and less than any ability to fight further.

Full Metal Jacket by Stanley Kubrick, based upon a book by Gustav Hasford The Short Timers.  It has many brilliant moments, but it tells a relatively driving story of lives of US soldiers in the Vietnam Conflict.  The movie itself is incredible but the pure genius of this, is the fact that basic training for some is far more harrowing than war.  Some thrive in war.  And it is an absolute tragedy that it is fought at all.  Most war movies prior to FMJ seemed to be directed or written (or both) with no understanding of the many layers needed to make a war film effective.  Seeing the breakdown of minds, seeing the perception of the madness of combat itself, and crushing of the soul, makes it clear, war isn't something that most people can experience without grave effects. (Beyond the direct casualties of the war itself.)

Apocalypse Now is an adaptation of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.  Francis Ford Coppola understood that telling the story of Heart of Darkness in Africa, as found in the original tale, would not allow for a deeper view of the themes.  The themes of the bankruptcy of imperialism and colonialism are passé when told in Africa.  But add them to the war in east Asia where a war was fought by the French against the North Vietnamese, and failed to find victory and reassert their colonial control, and bring in the Americans, who were once a colony and had to themselves throw off the control of the British, shows the madness of the conflict. Then, place a civilized man, a well trained military mind, who establishes his own region of control, with the assistance of the native people, and that "civilized" man then falls into savagery and violence.  Showing the lack of difference between the two labels of savage and civilized.

Fail Safe is a brilliant story of how dangerous the testing of the each other's defenses, could turn into a nuclear confrontation should an accident occur.  When messages are jammed, the bombers travel through the Soviet defenses, and if the American planes succeed, Moscow will be destroyed.  And if Moscow is destroyed, the Soviets will be compelled to respond... and what American city would be chosen for destruction?  This movie, its tone, and the seriousness of it, is a lesson that should compel the viewer to wonder about the madness of MAD, Mutually Assured Destruction as a policy.

In On the Beach by Nevil Shute this was a book that focused upon the tragic results of a war, rather than the fighting of that war. And if war is to be fought with nuclear weapons, there will be consequences. It is a powerfully effective view of those consequences, and it is a deep look at what might be unleashed by the choices made during war, whoever caused it, however it was fought. The film has a stark beauty about it, and it presents a world that feels like it is ready to die. The wounds inflicted by war have left the survivors unable to comprehend what they are going to face. It is an amazing, dark work that is frightening in the apt use of logic during an event without logic. 

Black Hawk Down shows the dystopia kind of world that was Somalia in the late 1980s and 1990s. Sent to bring food, the Americans face armies of angry men, women and children, and the warlords who control Somalia... as well as a hate for the American and western forces modern outlooks. The western forces were perceived as opportunists, despite bringing food to end the effects of the drought and resultant famine. And when the troops are sent to capture and return a warlord, they are unable to perceive the masses gathering around them, that want them dead. It is a mostly accurate work, and the constant assault upon your senses in it leads to you feel like you've also been to war by the end.

The Siege of Jadotville is an unusual small unit story. It features a force called the Opération des Nations Unies au Congo sent to help defend a region that Belgian and Congo native mercenaries were trying to take for local warlords in the Congo and to create a region called Katanga, as a territory to develop and take advantage of natural resource mining. (The Congo would later be called Zaire). Not only was the UN there, UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld tried to visit the region to help solve the conflict, only to be shot down by a Belgian mercenary pilot. The Irish had to survive, but refused to surrender. They faced death to fight for a cause that was an intellectual ideal, and they fought well, whatever the result.

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