HLJ's Movie Blog

21 Grams

I like any movie that strays away from a linear narrative. Other than Pulp Fiction. I hated that movie. But I digress...

21 Grams was really good. I was impressed with the story, the acting, the editing...it was all good. More later...

Tigerland

I wasn’t impressed with Tigerland. It wasn’t a very compelling movie. There were several scenes that just seemed false. There’s a scene in which two groups of soldiers run through a training exercise in the woods. There is a lot of cross cutting between the two groups and there is an effort to make the scene tense. However, these woods are not the jungles in Vietnam. There is no sense of immediate danger. Even when one of the men pulls out live ammunition and starts shooting, it still didn’t seem to help.

Another problem was the music. It began with a score that had a very eastern sound. Since this movie took place in an Army training facility in the U.S., it seemed false to have that kind of music in the soundtrack. Maybe all of this is intentional. Perhaps the director was trying to convey that falseness, the fact that this is all just play acting (i.e. the movie and the training facility). But why then am I interested at all in these characters or this story if it’s all just crap?

Band of Brothers

Band of Brothers

Sometimes, I regret not having cable. I used to have it. I got rid of it because all I was doing was watching TV. Not very good TV either. It always seemed like I had dozens of channels, but nothing was on. But after watching Band of Brothers and Long Way Round, I wonder if there isn’t some value to cable television.

I enjoy watching movies about wars. If you’ve read my blog from the beginning, you know that my favorite movie is Apocolyspe Now. I’m not sure exactly why I enjoy them. Maybe it’s because they are usually about people who overcome the most horrible - and real - circumstances. Maybe I just like to watch things blow up. After watching Band of Brothers, I’m not so certain about that second reason.

Since I can’t seem to connect my thoughts into a narrative, I’m going to resort to making points about the series.

1. I had a hard time keeping track of the characters. I knew Winters right away, but the other characters blended together until the last 2 episodes. This made it difficult for me to get attached to any of them and feel much of a loss (i.e. no sobbing) when they were killed or injured.
2. I wanted to know more about how the men interacted once the war was over. I’m glad they spent some time giving us information on their lives and what they did after the war, but did the entire group ever get together? Perhaps that information is in the documentary on the last disk.
3. The way the film was shot and edited seemed to illustrate the environment that the men lived through. It created that sense of fear, horror, and sadness very well. I still cringe when thinking about the scene in which Winters jumps out of the plane over Normandy. Or the look on the soldiers faces when they find the concentration camp.
4. The film makers could also be subtle. One of the best scenes in the series is in the episode the focuses on Eugene Roe, the doctor. He strikes up a friendship with a nurse at the hospital, but she is killed during a bombing raid. He goes into the town and sees that the hospital has been bombed. He goes to look for the nurse and stops in the door. He looks down into the pile of rubble. Instead of cutting away to a close-up of the nurse’s dead body, the camera stays focus on him. We don’t see what he is looking at. He reaches down and picks up a blue scarf. We know she is dead, but are spared the horror of looking at her, since Doc Roe’s reaction is the most important part of the story.

I enjoyed watching the series and was very glad that it wasn’t too gory. I hated Saving Private Ryan for just that reason. We all know war is hell, but watching a movie shouldn’t be. Then again, perhaps that was the point of all the gore in that film. Thankfully, they wanted to make a different point in Band of Brothers.