Cinema is the way in which man tries to express himself: feelings, thoughts, experiences of his everyday life. The image makes the message more direct.
Behind every funny picture there is usually a lesson of what we should or should not do. Behind every touching love story, a hidden hope to live or re-experience some of it. Behind a war story, a wish for all of us that such events never happen again.
And unfortunately, such events are happening all around us in our world. Today the day is dark. Let cinema through its films remind us of the brutality of war, the futility of the loss of so many human lives, the absurdity of the consequences that leaves behind and the need to cry out: NEVER AGAIN.
All quiet in the western front (1930)
Based on the novel with the same title by Erich Maria Remarque, the film -a decade after the end of WW I- depicts in a most realistic way, with no attempt to be nice and gentle for the audience or to conceal the barbarities of warfare. The story of young men that sacrificed themselves in a war fought for the interests of the powerful brought the realization that there are no moral wars. In fact, as Variety magazine had written :
"The League of Nations could make no better investment than to buy up the master-print, reproduce it in every language, to be shown in all the nations until the word "war" is taken out of the dictionaries".
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Paths of Glory
To say anything about Kubrick's genius is an understatement. He made a film about the absurdity of war, centering on a futile and absurd order to take an enemy position given by a superior officer. The soldiers must follow it even if it results in 55% casualties to the army. Whichever path one takes in the face of the absurdity of war, one will always be the loser. And morality will be miles away. The end scene reveals that both the victors and the vanquished are always damaged.
Ivan's childhood (1962)
How does a child become a soldier? How does a war change his life radically? Through successive flashbacks, Tarkovsky , the poet of camera -suggestively- brings us not only the story of young Ivan, who becomes a spy against the Germans to avenge his family's death, but also the lives of the people affected by war. The scene of the mother by the well and the prisoners' messages on the wall emphasize how man becomes a beast without remorse in a war zone.
Undeground (1995)
I grew up in the Balkans and the war in Yugoslavia played an important role in my teenage psyche. It was not a war miles away. It was right next door to my home. Its victims were people who came to my country every summer to vacation, smiling, united in one nation. The civil war, as Thucydides mentions, becomes a cause for all forms of evil to spread while morality, which characterizes the noble soul, disappears. The film "Underground " with its ferocious pace, balancing between comedy and drama, fills our screen with the brutality when "brother kills brother".
Dr. Strangelove: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
Filmed during the Cold War era, the film is about exactly how easy it is to start a war, especially in this nuclear age. And how devastating to the entire planet the continued manufacture and acquisition of sophisticated weapons could be. Kubrick made this dark-comedy film as a lecture to humanity.
An insane American general gives the order to hit targets in Russian territory with hydrogen bombs. The American president (using Peter Sellers in three typical roles) tries to prevent the coming disaster, proving that peace is harder to achieve than war.
There are many films that refer to war and are masterpieces: Apocalypse now, Platoon, Thin Red Line, Pretty Village, Pretty Flame, Johny got his gun, Full Metal Jacket and some many others that we need more than one post to include them.
But believe me! No matter the era they refer to, or the war that they depict, there is only one conclusion in the end :
War is not just a historic event. It is the end of human nature, the end of humanity.
Thank you for reading!