barracuda wrote:I learned about the horror of war primarily from films. Not from reading anti-fascist tracts, or from watching the news, or going to war, or anywhere else, really, excepting perhaps a few books here and there - books about which I suppose you might express the same Truffautian warning, that they are simply vicarious thrills. If you want to make the claim that The Deer Hunter, or Apocalypse Now, or Catch 22, or Grave of the Fireflies are glorifications of the fun times to be had in war because they allow you to walk away from the battle with your legs and your popcorn intact... well, fine. I tend to disagree.
I'm glad for you. Really. A very large part of the world learned about the horror of war by growing up in the middle of one. I learned about the horror of war from growing up with parents who had grown up in one. Add those two groups and it may be a majority.
As this seems to be a response to me, allow me to point out I didn't say anything about war being made to seem like fun times! Now that you mention it, there are more than a few movies that depict war as sport, or comedy - "Hogan's Heroes," "McHale's Navy" - or as straightforward heroism, or a martial arts dance, or a dramatic backdrop to an undying love, or a good way to arrange an origin for Iron Man. But more usually, war movies do their best to show war as a horror. They set up a bunch of nice, real, imperfect, well-meaning American guys who suddenly and meaninglessly explode into unappetizing gore, like in "Hamburger Hill," which however is still an apologia for the Vietnam war and the soldiers who fought in it. Showing the horror of war and being against war are two separate things. Resisting it, showing ways to end it, is yet a third thing.
Consider that pro-war ideology, at least when serious, itself acknowledges war as a horror: War is a necessary horror. Those who commit it on our behalf do us a great service. War is a horror, but ennobling. Those who sacrifice their bodies to its bestiality are the best among us. They save the rest of us. They transcend everyday life, become more than citizens. Only they may speak of war with authority. If you haven't served, you don't know shit, and best you shut your mouth.
War is a horror, but irresistible. Unfortunately it is natural to the human condition. You must be strong and determined and ready to wage war, lest your country succumb and your family suffer. If you find yourself amid this horror, do what you must, and if you have the advantage of superior power, kill your enemy without hesitation, lest you later be killed, like the nice Jewish boy who let the treacherous German live too long in "Saving Private Ryan." The choice to kill is often the most merciful among a set of terrible options. Rising up to the moment of killing is a test. It takes a man to kill. It makes you a man; and be you ever after a damaged man. Find solace in the friendships and loyalties you will discover amongst your comrades in battle, who will be with you forever. Only the battle-tested know. "We Were Soldiers."
The brass, they are stupid. They are arrogant meatheads, mired in military theory, blind to battlefield realities. They specialize in mistakes. To them, you are an expendable piece. They waste your lives, needlessly. Unfortunately this, too, is a necessity. A military can run only with hierarchy and obedience. The brass don't know any better. No matter how ill-informed they are, you follow their orders, and if disobey you one day must, let it be in going too far, than in hesitating and failing.
War is necessary to render justice. The enemy is even more horrible. And so on.
A great work, "The Deer Hunter" to me treats war as an inevitability. The men grow up in a violent culture, but it's akin to a natural state. Somehow they are sucked out of Pennsylvania and into the state of war, there's never a question that they won't go, that the groom shall leave his bride first thing after the wedding. In fact, there's simply a jump cut and there they are, already in the thick of fire. The movie never rises above the soldier's struggle. The enemy is inhuman, they commit beastly and unnecessary acts of torture. The American soldiers do what they must to survive. One of them can't take it, he is so damaged that he loses his mind, but his friend will do all to save him, even return to the enemy country where he is still being kept. Still, he is lost. I don't think the singing of "God Bless America" at the end is ironic. It is a song of thanks by those who survived.
"Apocalypse Now," an even greater work, transcends most of that. No one can accuse it of rationalizations. In fact, it's hard to see that rationality is even possible. War may be an inevitable function of the human condition, but it's crazy as all shit. No, even crazier than that. If you think you've measured how crazy it is, you're wrong; it will always be crazier!
"Catch-22" is a more straightforward case, and I'd say it's a genuinely antiwar film. It shows a system behind the insanity. There are a few sane people in this war, and they're the ones who don't want to be there. It acknowledges that desertion is an option, too. I just hope it's not indicative of something fundamental that the movie, at least, is artistically the least of your three examples (subtracting "Fireflies," which I haven't seen). Great book, I think: I remember it in detail, but haven't read it in more than 20 years.
As a side note, I hope you'll allow: Books and movies are different animals. Maybe not as much if you see the movie before reading the book, because then the movie will provide the images for your reading. But this possibility of providing vicarious thrills through the most brutally honest depiction of combat action -- not the only aspect of our problematic, but an important one -- also exists with books, even antiwar ones, and even with news or historical documents, as suggested by the label applied to the video posted above, the one depicting real-life carnage.
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