Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission.
I was reading a memoir by a combat veteran today who served in Afghanistan and he had this to say:
“I remember watching the movie Saving Private Ryan with him [my dad] and all I wanted after that was to be a soldier.”
Perhaps you’ve seen Saving Private Ryan. The opening sequence is harrowing–a visceral depiction of war (the bloody U.S. landing at Omaha Beach on D-Day, June 6, 1944) – followed by a “feel-good” Spielberg gloss that follows a band of heroes that “rescues” Private Ryan.
This is the problem with war films, even visceral ones. Boys and teenagers watch them and think they’re cool; they seek the deadliest of challenges, even war, guided and motivated as they are by BS pro-war government/Hollywood propaganda.
It’s very difficult to depict war without valorizing it. The director Samuel Fuller, who served in World War II and made the movie The Big Red One, noted how movies don’t depict combat realistically, even ones like Saving Private Ryan. In his words: “You can’t see anything in actual combat. To do it right, you’d have to blind the [movie] audience with smoke, deafen them with noise, then shoot one of them in the shoulder to scare the rest to death. That would give the idea [of real war], but then not many people would come to the movies.”*
I love that description of a “real” immersive war movie. Now, who wants to volunteer to be the one who gets shot in the shoulder?
Obviously, you’ll rarely see “real” war in the mainstream media or in Hollywood movies because ratings and profits matter. Those movies that truly show the very worst aspects of war, without glorifying war in any way, are rare indeed. Perhaps one of these is Johnny Got His Gun (1971).
The scene featuring Donald Sutherland as Jesus Christ – his howl at the end on the train of death – is unforgettable.
Another incredibly harrowing war film that I’ve never forgotten is Come and See (1985). Set on the Russian Front during World War II, it is a shattering depiction of the utter brutality of war.
One more war film that is perhaps prettier than it should be but which captures the sadness and loss of innocence of the World War I generation is Testament of Youth (2014). The scene near the end where Alicia Vikander calls for an end to killing – an end to war – is heartrending.
Readers, what “war” movies have you seen that truly made you want to reject war in all its sheer bloody awfulness and waste?
*Quoted in “Reel War vs Real War,” article by Peter Maslowski, MHQ: Military History Quarterly, Summer 1998 issue.
William J. Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF), professor of history, and a senior fellow at the Eisenhower Media Network (EMN), an organization of critical veteran military and national security professionals. His personal substack is Bracing Views.
