What War Movies had the biggest impact on you?
- Thread starter gorfias
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So I know it was mentioned before by @Ezekiel but I want to elaborate on why it's important to me and why it had a huge impact on me personally, especially since the first time I watched it I was like 6 years old, maybe 5.
Schindler's List: So it was probably the first war movie I ever watched that wasn't about the soldiers, while there are plenty of anti-war war movies, I don't think I'd ever thought of how hard it must be to survive a war zone, and this movie showed it to me, how hard it was, how scary it was, how even among that misery and hopelessness there's still small moments of joy still to be found, and how solidarity can really make a difference, but also how an evil man can become a good man and what it means to live with regret.
So, getting to that, I genuinely feel like part of my hatred of Capitalism comes from this movie, I think a lot of people forget because by the end of the movie he's done so much good and saved so many lives, but the reason why that speech at the end is so hard-hitting, is because he's right he could have saved more people, but also because he was a monster that wanted to use the Jews as cheap labour and didn't even think of them as people at the beginning at least, it was through working with them and slowly getting to know them that he began to empathise and sympathise with them, that he realised that the system that he directly benefited from and not only participated in but encouraged, that it was pure evil and corrupt and it ruined people's lives, and that's why the speech hits hard, because he's guilty of it, he was a Nazi supporter, he wanted this, he helped bring this about and no matter how many times the people tell him it was enough, he will never undo that, in his mind he will forever be guilty and even if he had sold the watch and the car, and everything else it would have never been enough.
Look maybe it's because I'm also haunted by guilt of the sins I committed in my past, and I know what it's like to do good deeds and never feeling like it's enough to justify it, like no matter what I do it'll always be there and I'll always be evil, but that message hits me really hard, to the point where it's impossible for me to watch this movie without crying, between the tragedy of the Holocaust, Schindler's life and what it reminds me of, it's just a movie that it's special to me, it makes me feel things that no other movie makes me feel, it also showed me my emotional growth as I remember one of the reason my family called me an emotionless robot was because I didn't cry at this movie, but now I can, probably because of all the bad choices I made that made sympathise with Schindler.
Schindler's List: So it was probably the first war movie I ever watched that wasn't about the soldiers, while there are plenty of anti-war war movies, I don't think I'd ever thought of how hard it must be to survive a war zone, and this movie showed it to me, how hard it was, how scary it was, how even among that misery and hopelessness there's still small moments of joy still to be found, and how solidarity can really make a difference, but also how an evil man can become a good man and what it means to live with regret.
So, getting to that, I genuinely feel like part of my hatred of Capitalism comes from this movie, I think a lot of people forget because by the end of the movie he's done so much good and saved so many lives, but the reason why that speech at the end is so hard-hitting, is because he's right he could have saved more people, but also because he was a monster that wanted to use the Jews as cheap labour and didn't even think of them as people at the beginning at least, it was through working with them and slowly getting to know them that he began to empathise and sympathise with them, that he realised that the system that he directly benefited from and not only participated in but encouraged, that it was pure evil and corrupt and it ruined people's lives, and that's why the speech hits hard, because he's guilty of it, he was a Nazi supporter, he wanted this, he helped bring this about and no matter how many times the people tell him it was enough, he will never undo that, in his mind he will forever be guilty and even if he had sold the watch and the car, and everything else it would have never been enough.
Look maybe it's because I'm also haunted by guilt of the sins I committed in my past, and I know what it's like to do good deeds and never feeling like it's enough to justify it, like no matter what I do it'll always be there and I'll always be evil, but that message hits me really hard, to the point where it's impossible for me to watch this movie without crying, between the tragedy of the Holocaust, Schindler's life and what it reminds me of, it's just a movie that it's special to me, it makes me feel things that no other movie makes me feel, it also showed me my emotional growth as I remember one of the reason my family called me an emotionless robot was because I didn't cry at this movie, but now I can, probably because of all the bad choices I made that made sympathise with Schindler.
I've not seen a lot of war movies honestly. Kind of not my thing.
One I will say had an impact would be
Deathwatch
It's a horror movie set in the trenches in World War 1 which not that common in terms of horror film settings. To say much more requires me to use spoilers really.
One I will say had an impact would be
Deathwatch
It's a horror movie set in the trenches in World War 1 which not that common in terms of horror film settings. To say much more requires me to use spoilers really.
Due to all the blood that has been spilled in the fighting and Trenches the barbed wire itself that lines much of the battlefield and trenches has come alive possibly with the help of something else too
I'd not heard of it before! Sounds interesting. I'll look for it but it's supposed to be rare now.
The Human Condition
Come and See
The Burmese Harp
Apocalypse Now
Fires on the Plain
Oro, Plata, Mata
Breaker Morant
Ran
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
Paths of Glory
Kanal
Alexander Nevsky
Soldier of Orange
The Red and the White
The Cranes are Flying
Henry V
Das Boot
Playing for Time
Diamonds of the Night
Hope and Glory
Reds
On the Beach
Stalingrad
The Shop on Main Street
Lawrence of Arabia
Au revoir les enfants
Patton
Throne of Blood
Schindler's List
The Assault
Gallipoli
Three Godless Years
Coming Home
The Killing Fields
Cross of Iron
King Rat
Grand Illusion
Kagemusha
Catch-22
Europa, Europa
Zulu
Lacombe, Lucien
Barry Lyndon
The Deer Hunter
The Wannsee Conference
Gettysburg
The Big Red One
Come and See
The Burmese Harp
Apocalypse Now
Fires on the Plain
Oro, Plata, Mata
Breaker Morant
Ran
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
Paths of Glory
Kanal
Alexander Nevsky
Soldier of Orange
The Red and the White
The Cranes are Flying
Henry V
Das Boot
Playing for Time
Diamonds of the Night
Hope and Glory
Reds
On the Beach
Stalingrad
The Shop on Main Street
Lawrence of Arabia
Au revoir les enfants
Patton
Throne of Blood
Schindler's List
The Assault
Gallipoli
Three Godless Years
Coming Home
The Killing Fields
Cross of Iron
King Rat
Grand Illusion
Kagemusha
Catch-22
Europa, Europa
Zulu
Lacombe, Lucien
Barry Lyndon
The Deer Hunter
The Wannsee Conference
Gettysburg
The Big Red One
That is a very respectable list of movies. I’d also recommend “All Quite on the Western Front”
Cosign.
After years of hearing about this movie and the methology around it (it was hard to find because it's a Soviet film from 1985), I finally caught it on the Criterion Channel and holy hell, it's BRUTAL. A masterpiece, but fucking brutal.
If you're interested in Soviet/Russian war movies, check out The Ascent. It's also a WWII film, and it was directed by Larisa Shepitko, the wife of Come and See director Elem Kilmov. Not as great as Come and See, but excellent in its own right and nearly as brutal.
One thing I really enjoyed about the story of Schindler, is that I actually did a little bit of genetic diversity research, to see what would be the "minimum safe gene pool" for any society to be limited to, without a risk of recursive inbreeding traits becoming ultimately lethal. And the rough number I found was around 2000 members. Well, Schindler is attributed to saving roughly 1200 himself. So, even if every other Jew was killed, that was almost enough, from that one person's actions, to preserve that genetic line. I thought that was pretty cool, and a telling thing on a personal level.
I've never been a big fan of culture, in the context of what most people use it for, as lately I find our obsession with culture leads to a lot of terrible behavior, on the basis of cultural purity, or preservation, etc. It's why I actually find the war movie Monument Men to be a really terrible film. All those men, dying to save....stuff. It's just...I don't care, I find lives more important to stuff, any day. But, this particular bit of leather and pigment is somehow priceless, "because culture". Meh.
But with Schindler, the actual preservation of a people, a genetic variety of humans, that can help to keep humanity diverse, was preserved, a significant number of them. And there's now I think like...*does a quick check* 8500 roughly as of 2012, so that's really cool. Given the way populations usually exponentially increase with subsequent generations, it will be interesting to see how many eventually stem from his rescue attempt. How, eventually, it might end up sort of like how many Asian people can trace their lineage to Genghis Khan. I also enjoy how, after the war, when Schindler was never able to really establish himself financially again, the various families that he saved, basically all took care of him until he died. Returning the favor by caring for him.