Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by Victor Khomenko (M) on December 23, 2010 at 11:13:00

In Reply to: RE: Well-stated in some respects, Vic, but if we know nothing of the characters, we posted by tinear on December 23, 2010 at 09:35:58

To know the character, and to see him "develop" are different things. One doesn't mean the other, the time scope might be short, and circumstances completely dominating, etc.

Furthermore, some war movies take more of a bird eye approach, where very few, if any, characters are defined to any serious degree. Yet that doesn't prevent us from seeing the ugly truth of what is happening.

Making you fall in love with a character, only to see him later die a horrible death - is this not a manipulation? Acceptable and accepted, perhaps, but manipulation nonetheless. Injecting some personal story into each war movie - is it really necessary? Conceivably one could envision a film where the main character was just an observer, and nothing bad happened to him, it was all other nameless people who got chopped up. The overall impression would be different, more of the epic type panorama, but it would still be a war film.

So nothing is wrong per se with identifiable characters, and their... ahem... development, I just don't see it as mandatory.

To me the guys in HH were quite real, development or not. Real enough to make the viewer feel the pain of their departure... and that is sufficient, in my book.