Reviewing Movies

Just binge-watched the entire 10-episode series. It's quite a sensual assault. 

Although it shares the same production team with its sister series, Band of Brothers it is an entirely different animal. First off the soldiers seem more real to us because we meet their families and we spend time with them as individuals and get to know them on a personal level. In this series we do not repeat boot camp or see many scenes of training, the men ship out to war almost immediately. Rather than paratroopers we meet the marines here who make amphibious landings on tropical islands in the Pacific. Scenes of cold and snow are replaced by tropical monsoons. Hard to choose between trench foot and jungle rot. 

All soldiers seem to share disdain for West Point trained Lieutenants. The first casaulty is killed by friendly fire. Wandering off to answer a call of nature at night is a dangerous proposition. Getting hit by your own artilary because some lieutenant couldn't read a map a common theme. Nicknames seem to be a hallmark of camaraderie: Snafu, Sledgehammer, Runner, Peaches. A. A. Haldane, a beloved captain was Ack Ack. Great leaders ask nothing of their men they are not willing to risk themselves too often placing themselves in peril. Too many awards get given posthumously. 

Battle fatigue is suffered by all fighters who spend too much time with short rations, little or no potable water, in harsh environments under continual enemy fire or bombardment. The extended period these soldiers spend recuperating as celebrated liberators of Australia in Melbourne are unique to this series. The Japanese Soldier made this campaign unique. The ferosity of their attacks in seeming utter disdain for self-preservation, their attitude of no surrender kill or be killed, their ingenuity and the privations they willingly endured. An enemy you cannot understand is a fearsome one. 

Finally we get to see the survivors return home. The CO picked up at a whistle stop by his younger brother and dirt-farm poor father in an aging farm truck. Snafu met by no one. Leckie reclaiming the newspaper post he left behind and finally getting to wear his dress blues. The girls they left behind. Most poignant are the scenes between Sledge and his doctor father. Every battle weary vet should have someone so understanding to come home to.

Watched it last night in my VHS copy for the first time in decades. It won the 20-year-old Timothy Hutton an Academy Award. Dircted by Robert Redford it is an actor's movie. 

First shock is seeing how young and svelte is Donald Sutherland who plays the father. As the frigid, self-centred mother Mary Tyler Moore appears as if ready to shatter at any moment. A woman so locked inside her own skin that she is incapable of placing her arms around her son when he gives her a hug good night. In the end it is the father here who shows his feminine side. 

The movie survives on the strength of its actors' performances. There is no background soundtrack to set the mood or tone. The upper class neighbourhood where Conrad lives is sterile and featureless. 

Wracked by survivor's guilt Conrad, as his father stipulates much like his mother, is unable to express or come to terms with his own feelings which he has locked deep inside. Depression is anger directed inward and Conrad displays all the classic symptoms. Lack of sleep, loss of interest in former activities, loss of appetite. Highly intelligent he continues to read, a paperback never far from hand--what was he reading? He reaches out to friends who obviously care about him and displays interest in the opposite sex. Of course he misses the older brother whom he lost whose room is still maintained next his own two years after the death. Conrad, of course, is not the only one in this family that has lost a loved one. His parents lost a child and portray all the classic stesses though the mother refuses to accept any form of counselling attaching stigma and weakness to asking for help. Marriage breakdown following the death of a child is all too common.  

In the end though this is Hutton's movie, his sessions with Judd Hirsh supplying only glympses of his inner turmoil. Psychaitrists give patients their home phone numbers?

The Holy Catholic Church was founded on the blood of martyrs whose faith witnessed to the God of their belief. More wars have been fought in the name of religion than for vitually any other cause with both sides believing God was on their side. Ecclesiastical politics powered by a belief in its being sanctioned by God is uglier than anything a secular politician ever conspired to produce.

Driven by a resolve to convert the heathen missionaries including the Jesuits protraited here risked privation and death to bring salvation to the masses. In so doing they brought their diseases, cultural dislocation, the breakdown of tribal society and traditions. And in learning the local languages and dialects they prepared the way for the exploitation by the slavers and colonial powers that followed. 

Devout though their intentions the introduction of culturally inappropriate theology has probably done more harm than good. The genocide, destruction of the landbase that supported a hunter/gatherer society, cultural genocide through residential schools, confinement to reservations on lands for which the invaders found no use, and the introduction of inappropriate dietary items such as sugar and alcohol with the exploitation and slavery that often followed left indigenous peoples with the sentiment expressed here: That they wished they'd never seen these invaders.