I am very proud of Cruel Wife. She has agreed to watch Band of Brothers from nose-to-tail. She’s not big on war movies but (1) this is more or less real, even with the embellishments, and (2) even though it is disturbing, she’s still watching it.
I have said many times that I will insist that our kids watch BoB and Saving Pvt. Ryan before they leave home, for I want them to be innoculated against those who wish to poison their minds against our country and I want them pay proper respect to our military and our veterans.
I firmly believe that with the right illustration one cannot help but gain a certain amount of respect for those who have sacrificed in either their lives, their health, and in years of service. Reading of it in a history book will not suffice. One needs the visceral nature of the event.
Now, here you may roll your eyes but hear me out.
Years ago there was a game, Call of Duty. The game developers (Infinity Ward) made it a huge point to talk to veterans, scrutinize photographs, watch video footage, and I cannot remember if some actually visited the sites of historic battles.
But the thing is, so much of Band of Brothers looked as if I had been there before. Now, I am not in any way shape or form drawing equivalency between a first-person shooter and the real war, nor can a movie do it, but I am saying that the game captured enough to have your adrenaline racing. It was damn hard to make it up the beach at Normandy, you died over and over and over again. The wire, the bunkers and trenches, the fields beyond, and the guns blazing non-stop. It was pretty intense. And so help me, there was an added bit of adrenaline watching as Market Garden went sideways. There were parts of BoB where my inner self has been screaming “Danger! Danger! You guys, there’s bad guys up on that roof! There are guns downstairs in that building over there! There’s a sniper over yonder!” In the game you’re getting shot at, guys are dying all around you, and you still have no idea where the krauts are shooting you from.
Believe it or not, a game can make you respect your soldiers more, because dammit, what they endured was hundreds of thousands of times worse. In the game you aren’t tired, you aren’t cold, you aren’t hurt, you don’t have crappy food, you don’t have some idiot asshole giving orders that make no sense at all. What you do get in the game is a visual and visceral feel for what it might have looked like, and it did not look pretty, even as inadequate as it was. That game didn’t feel like they were trying to make WWII like a level from Doom II where you get a BFG-9000 later on. You had two weapons. That was it, and lone-wolfing it didn’t work so very well. And you died if you got hit.
This time around I’m paying more attention to BoB even though the DVD’s don’t have Closed Captions – Cruel Wife is my interpreter at times.
I am therefore not blogging much for the next few nights and haven’t for the last two. I trust you’ll understand why, even if I can’t exactly explain in words my internalized metaphor that embodies all the reasons why I am compelled to try to understand that section of history a bit more. I’m sure I’m not at all alone in that, however.
Update: We just finished up Bastogne. Beautiful:
We didn’t need to be “rescued” – 101st Airborne
I agree on BoB. That’s a great series.
The one where they find the concentration camp makes me wish, every time I watch it, we had made our nukes before the war with Germany was over. A glowing city or two was deserved. Especially when they try to deny they knew what was going on in that huge camp always covered in the smell of disease and burning flesh.
As for Saving Private Ryan, pass. That’s not a good war movie except in its realistic scenes of carnage.
A good example, and worst part of that movie, is the idiot translator.
He wets his pants as his buddy is killed in the next room and “grows’ at the end by committing a war crime (killing a prisoner).
And the line “Maybe the only good thing we did here is saving Private Ryan” (paraphrase).
How about getting rid of the fascists? Freeing countries under the boot heel of nazis? You can’t think of anything else good you did?
Nope, I don’t like that movie.
If you want a good, realistic war movie, try Pork Chop Hill. That’s another “based on a true story”, it is supposedly fairly accurate and shows war at its best and worst. It’s about a battle in Korea as the cease fire talks are going on.
Gregory Peck is a great leader in a very crappy situation.
He has to hold against overwhelming odds but his superiors won’t send reinforcements (because of some BS UN crap, it also shows how bad it is to get involved in a war with the UN on your side).
It shows The Fog of War very well as the follow-up elements think they’re going to mop-up and hold a position and yet, have to fight their way through.
It’s called an anti-war movie, but it isn’t ,It just shows war very accurately (not in the SPR special effects way, but in the “This is how things happen in war” way).
Or better yet, show the kids some WWII war-propaganda stuff, like They Were Expendable or Bataan, where Soldiers (and Marines and Airmen and Sailors) soldier on against certain defeat, just hoping to slow down defeat to give America time to get our stuff together. Those two movies were about us getting our butts kicked in the Philippines and were made before MacArthur had “returned!”. When the issue was still in doubt.
Of course, since you deserve your boycott, you’ll probably ignore this comment.
Loved Band of Brothers, but hated Saving Private Ryan. Pretty much for the reasons our esteemed boycotter Veeshir wrote.
It was almost like Spielberg was trying to teach us that Ryan was the ONLY redeeming part of their journey.
I prefer older films, such as The Longest Day.
No, you guys are right. Cruel Wife said much the same thing and that she would not watch it.
I said “Ok, but do me a favor and watch the d-day landing. If you want to turn it off immediately after that I am way cool with it. But that scene is way powerful.”. I definitely see it as a good way to harsh someone’s mellow if they don’t pay attention to the fact that even though war is necessary, it totally is Hell.
Anti-war movies are just as instructional because you can point it out to your kids as.a can-of-bullshit piece of propaganda.
Where ever did you get the idea that I ignore you, veesh? I don’t respect you, which is an altogether different beast… And I don’t inspect the spam bucket very often.
And I don’t inspect the spam bucket very often.
You should probably just be honest and call it the “Veeshir Bucket”.
As for the respect/ignore bit.
As Ghandi said,
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then you kick them in the nads and then you point and laugh. .
Fantastic! The veeshir bucket it is!
Could I really ignore you? No, because then I wouldn’t be able to insult you and life would get a little sadder every day for that.
I didn’t realize Ghandi was a big ‘nad kicker. You learn something new every day, don’t you?
OT but semi-related…
I have a job I won’t be keeping for very long for unrelated reasons, but there’s a guy there who I just don’t get along with (I know, shocking). He’s kind of a smug type who’s sure he’s the smartest person in the room and you’re not all that bright. One of his ‘things’ is to tell you the blatantly obvious as if he’s imparting Wisdom.
So I overheard him talking to someone about his cherished TI the other day.
Made me laugh it did.
I now have a mental picture for when I boycott you.
Well, when you boycott me I’d love to hea… wait. I’ve already been triple double-secret boycotted by you so is there an as-yet unheard level of misery to come? Ouchie.
You know the Hugh Laurie quote? “Try this… next time you’re at a meeting, look around the room. If you cannot immediately spot the asshole, it’s you.”
I have a hard time finding them.
Hang on. Did you say his “cherished TI”?? Oh, I know those types. They usually pee on themselves when using urinals and wear mismatched socks.