[Shaded Dogfood]

The other thread was closed. Hope this one won't be closed on general principles.


I just saw the movie and thought it a fine one. The consensus of most of the critics was that it was better than Flags of Our Fathers, but I don't know, I thought it was a fine film as well. It was the story of a photograph, while Letters is a more conventionally structured film, with more characters who are more sympathetic than the trio in Flags, who each had his own demon. The characters in Flags just want to live with honor, and for some of them this means to die with honor.


It's not a film to anger either blue or red staters, if one has compassion for the human condition. There are good and bad people shown on either side, and we as Americans are put in the interesting position of not really wanting people on either side of the struggle to be killed (Das Boot was sort of this way as well, though the killing was generally more abstract in that film).


I think this pair of films will go down with the finest films on WWII: The Thin Red Line, Bridge on the River Kwai, They Were Expendable, Battleground, Paisan, Das Boot, Sahara, Fires on the Plain, Schindler's List or whatever you might care to name.

 

[PainterPaul]

So, since you're the first one from the closed thread to have seen the film... in your opinion... this was not a sympathetic-to-the-Japanese movie, right?


>>> and we as Americans are put in the interesting position of not really wanting people on either side of the struggle to be killed


I am assuming you mean insofar as films/stories/viewers/readers opposed to real life events else I will become an idiot right away.


Edit: Actually, I am an idiot so please excuse my half-witted response.

 

[Dean Roddey]

I've not seen the movies, but I've heard interviews with Clint Eastwood on the radio about them, and from what he was saying, this one is shot from the Japanese point of view and of course you are going to start to empathize with the people on the side it's told from. The fact that we were at war with them over an act of agression doesn't mean that they didn't have interesting and heroic people on their side just as we did. Just because they were killing our people doesn't mean that they weren't just as patriotic or brave, they were just on the other side. So if you see it from that side, I think most people would tend to become more sympathetic towards that side.


There's nothing wrong with that. He did one from our side and one from theirs. Both sides are equally valid from the sides they are being told from. The folks on that island didn't decide to go to war, they just found themselves in a position where they were defending their homeland against invasion. Like probably most Americans, they did that whether they necesarily believed that the people running the show on their side were in the right to start the war or not.

 

[FredProgGH]

I do not want to talk about LfIJ unless I get express permission to be an idiot.

In writing.

 

[oink]



Quote:
Originally Posted by FredProgGH /forum/post/0


I do not want to talk about LfIJ unless I get express permission to be an idiot.

In writing.

I hereby grant Fred the opportunity to be an idiot like me.

There...how's that?

Dean,


You may be asking a lot here...some of us have family that fought in the Pacific War.

And there have been many stories passed down concerning that war...

 

[Dean Roddey]

There's two sides to every war. You don't have to like the results of someone's actions to admit that they had balls to carry them out, or to admit that they were actually interesting people or people who were not at all any different from what you would be like were the circumstances reversed. Not a few people came out of WWII with a grudging admiration for their enemies (on both sides), not because they liked what those people did, but because they realize that soldiers are soliders and they fight when told to fight, and they fought hard. It's easy to say that they should have known that they were fighting for the wrong side and should have just given up, but that's asking someone else to do what we wouldn't do ourselves.

 

[Gary McCoy]



Quote:
Originally Posted by Dean Roddey /forum/post/0


-snip-

Not a few people came out of WWII with a grudging admiration for their enemies (on both sides), not because they liked what those people did, but because they realize that soldiers are soliders and they fight when told to fight, and they fought hard.

-snip-

This thought would never have occurred to me. Not that I doubt it, we both live in the land of fruits and nuts, and maybe people are more ambivalent about war here.


But I was born in the MidWest, grew up in the South and on the East Coast, and I never met any Veterans who had any admiration, grudging or any other kind, for the "enemy" (insert perjorative description of choice within quotes).


My own father hated the Japanese his entire life. He enlisted in the Merchant Marine at age 15, and served in the Pacific and watched everyone he knew die on merchant vessels attacked by Japanese submarines. He then entered the US Coast Guard and hunted such subs the rest of the War. While he was at sea, a Japanese submarine attacked an oil refinery at Geleta, California where his father worked.


My father-in-law was in the Normandy invasion, coming ashore at Omaha Beach. He never cared for Germans, although he learned to do business with them in the late 1990's, fifty years later. He never could watch Saving Private Ryan.


I simply cannot accept your premise that each side had any degree of empathy for the other in WW2. The prevalant attitude and the one governments on both sides encouraged was one of hatred. Utter hatred based upon cultural, ethnic, racial, and religious intolerance.


I am not my father and I will see this film. But my point is your own attitudes and mine are not those of the generation that fought the conflict. Even though human opinions and attitudes cover an entire spectrum, there is a world of difference between today and the 1940's.


I really wish that Hollywood would stop making films about historical events with modern interpretations. I have not seen this film yet, but I fear that is it's fatal flaw.


Gary

 

[properbostonian]

I credit Clint and the studio - it's an interesting concept to release films from both points of view. For me, however, the Japanese point of view isn't compelling enough to see it in the threater. Perhaps I will rent Letters.


A bit OT...I thought Flags was a good film but I'm not sure if I will list it on my top ten list. Also, some of the acting, especially from Jesse Bradford and Ryan Phillippe (sp?) was borderline horrendous.

 

[Shaded Dogfood]

I dunno... this is going in the same direction the other thread was. We'll see what the old Scooper makes of all this.

 

[oink]

I agree with Gary McCoy.

My sentiments as well.


The Marines that island-hopped in the Pacific had an EXTREME hatred of the enemy (according to 2 uncles that fought there).


They were often so enraged they rarely took prisoners.

Both sides considered the other non-human.


I am done with this thread (I don't want to be the inspiration for it being locked down).


Good luck, Dean.

 

[PooperScooper]

CW,

It's hard to talk about a movie when nobody goes to see it. So, as usual, what happens is that people have to enter their self-important opinions that don't have any bearing on the movie and show a lack of respect for people who may want to talk about the movie. Life on the internet. Maybe there will be a chance to talk about the movie after the DVD release.


larry