Re: Most Accurate Military Movie?
- From: eugene@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Eugene Griessel)
- Date: Thu, 03 Apr 2008 06:10:37 GMT
"Matt Wiser" <MattWiser_99@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
With the thread for the most inaccurate movies going, how about one for the most accurate
one, especially military ones?
I don't suppose we could discuss what various persons posting here
understand by the term "accurate"? To quote (freely and from memory)
Lawrence Durrell: "there was this vast battlefield where nothing
appeared to be going on." Which epitomises the problem of any movie
director. You cannot make a movie showing the reality of a military
situation because it would be, in most cases, a lot of nothing.
Das Boot best captures this feeling of the lengthy periods of ennui
involved, IMHO, of all the military movies I've seen. A desert air
force pilot of WW2 vintage once summed it up as "you fly for 20
minutes, maybe there's a brief period of 3 to 4 minutes of terror and
tension if you tangle with the enemy, and then you fly back for 20
minutes, if you have survived."
So what accuracy is being talked about? Technical detail? Historical
accuracy? Portrayal of the emotional state of one or more
participants? Reality? I don't think any movie can encompass it all.
I once sat and watched the raw footage a near neighbour had filmed of
a genuine firefight iin the bush. He was an ex-military man himself,
one of those fearless types always getting into the thick of things,
and maker of quite a number of documentaries on matters military.
The footage, even though filming was taking place only when there was
shooting, was boring in the extreme. You could not see the enemy, you
could only occasionally see the good guys. Mortars were in use - but
the sounds of the explosions would never meet Hollywood standards.
The sound of the rifles and machine guns would definitely never have
met Hollywood standards. Even a genuine act of bravery -filmed as it
happened and which later won the man involved a medal, looked tame -
the participant looking like he was going about his daily task in a
very unhero like way. By the time this hit the screen it would have
been severely edited, sound effects added - plus a dramatic voice-over
telling what was happening otherwise the viewer would never have been
able to figure it out for himself.
Here's a list of a few possibles, feel free to add more:
Das Boot
Run Silent, Run Deep
The Enemy Below
Saving Private Ryan
Tora, Tora, Tora: It beats Pearl Harbor (2001) any day, anytime.
Band of Brothers
Battle of Britain
Liked Susanna York in her pink knickers and WAAF uniform top.
That's all for now, but put up your own favorites!
I have never seen a movie on military matters that quite matches my
limited experience of matters military. All have left me feeling
slightly dissatisfied and grumbling. "The Longest Day", was in my
humble opinion, a military movie that most closely followed Cornelius
Ryan's book - but whether that was accurate is debatable. (I saw it
and read the book decades ago and would probably radically change my
opinion if I saw it again now).
Eugene L Griessel
Pi are round. Bread are square.
- I usually post only from Sci.Military.Naval -
.
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