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In Reply to: Not trying to be contentious... posted by Joe S on April 18, 2000 at 13:52:41:
***..more like trying to give a historical context that Vic apparently doesnt have. I actually agree with his sentiments...In fact, I am *generally* familiar with the differences that existed. However, I shall submit to you, that splashing mud at the camp commendant was not too common even in the most forgiving of those forgiving camps.
The problem, as I see it, is that of generalization. When covering historically significant events, a particular duty is on the creator. He must realize that his work can be, and likely will be, used as a document to some degree. That means that one should not concentrate on atypical that goes completely agains the "typical", without making the existance of that "typical" known.
When talking about the war in Europe, that "typical" was NOT playing practical jokes with German soldiers. It was not boredom - it was horror.
One would be ill-advised to make a movie about, say, the SS concentration camp guards playing with their cats and decorating their apartments. When we say "SS" we mean something other that a cat-lover. We mean something much more "typical".
Again, all this would not mean much had there been an alternate way of learning the truth - the horrible truth in that case. The way it was presented in that work creates a rather innocent, boring, if you will, view of that most atrocious war.
I see where you are coming from, but I suspect that the people who made this movie were being true to the US experience in their own way. Witin its narrow context (US POWs) the comments I have seen from American prisoners to charcaterize their experience was precisely, to take your own word, one of "boredom". They were not terrorized by their captors - which was one of the reasons the US was so I'll prepared for what happened to POWs in Korea, where the US simply expected that their prisoners would be treated according to the Geneva convention as had already been the case with the Germans. (Why they forgot the lesson of what the Japanese did is beyond me.)In that regard I think you put the film makers on the horns of a dilemma here - do they tell a story of prisoners sitting out years of war in tolerable and immensly boring conditions with the occaisional escape (definitely accurate to history)? Or transform the pic into a concentration camp picture with brutality that didnt exist in the US POW situation? In either case you must expect that contrievances will be added to make a movie that will engage an audience. But which do you choose as a starting point? Which is propoganda and which is truth in that context?
I suspect that expecting any film to capture the full breadth of experience and destructiveness (both human and material) of war is asking too much of any one film - particularly in the case of a war of the scope & brutality of WW2. But who knows, maybe someone will do it someday...
joe
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