This review gives everything away, so see the movie first.
It is neither allegory nor satire, the two finest categories in both fiction and cinema, and yet it approaches perfection anyway. It is of a nature I have no name for, but it is a nature that reveals truth and undermines falsehoods.
Nothing is more cloaked in falsehood than the victor's depiction of past wars. It is especially true of the children of the victors--especially the children of US WWII veterans, like myself.
We get our view of the war from movies like Audi Murphy in To Hell and Back or Saving Private Ryan. Nothing but praise for our heroes and cheers for killing the enemy.
But QT exposes this hypocrisy by engineering a film where we are disgusted first by the excesses of the enemy and then by the excesses of our heroes. That is the first instance. The hypocrisy is slammed home in the second instance where we are first disgusted by the sight of American after American being shot dead by by a German sniper hero and secondly brought to revel in the butchery of several hundred enemy at the hands of our heroes. Tit for tat.
It fits the pattern of praise for our heroes and cheers for killing the enemy, but because it is presented both ways the hypocrisy becomes self- evident. This is why so many people hate the movie--even if they fail to realize it. High art, true art, 10 of 10.
It is neither allegory nor satire, the two finest categories in both fiction and cinema, and yet it approaches perfection anyway. It is of a nature I have no name for, but it is a nature that reveals truth and undermines falsehoods.
Nothing is more cloaked in falsehood than the victor's depiction of past wars. It is especially true of the children of the victors--especially the children of US WWII veterans, like myself.
We get our view of the war from movies like Audi Murphy in To Hell and Back or Saving Private Ryan. Nothing but praise for our heroes and cheers for killing the enemy.
But QT exposes this hypocrisy by engineering a film where we are disgusted first by the excesses of the enemy and then by the excesses of our heroes. That is the first instance. The hypocrisy is slammed home in the second instance where we are first disgusted by the sight of American after American being shot dead by by a German sniper hero and secondly brought to revel in the butchery of several hundred enemy at the hands of our heroes. Tit for tat.
It fits the pattern of praise for our heroes and cheers for killing the enemy, but because it is presented both ways the hypocrisy becomes self- evident. This is why so many people hate the movie--even if they fail to realize it. High art, true art, 10 of 10.