It always seems weird to me that a festive occasion should be called
“Memorial Day.” The purpose of the day is to pay tribute to the men
and women of our armed forces who have given their lives for our
freedom. There is a national cemetery near my home and every Memorial
Day American flags are posted in front of all the tombstone. It’s a
startling sight – endless rows of matching white gravestones with
American flags. When my kids were teenagers they helped plant the
flags.
Having served in the Armed Forces Reserves, I've always considered
myself incredibly lucky that I didn't have to fight in a war. Back in
those days we were drafted. And it's all the more reason to give thanks
to our current military personnel. Not only are they there putting
themselves in harm's way in awful hellholes, but they volunteered.
A couple of years ago I had the privilege of participating in the
Veterans Retreat Weekend put on by the WGA. Returning vets worked in
small groups with professional writers who served as mentors. It was
amazing how talented these people were. And the stories they had to
tell -- wow.
Maybe a cool thing to do today is watch some war movies. And they
don't have to be horrifically gruesome (although SAVING PRIVATE RYAN
should be on the top of your must-see list). CASABLANCA is a war movie
of sorts. And there are comedies like MASH. APOCALYPSE NOW really
captures the absurdity of war (and has some amazing performances), and
if you've never seen Kubrick's PATHS OF GLORY you will be blown away.
Others worth seeing are FULL METAL JACKET, SGT. YORK, PATTON, THE HURT
LOCKER, THE DIRTY DOZEN, THREE KINGS, DEER HUNTER, and a film with one
of my favorite titles ever -- DUCK, YOU SUCKER.
All terrific, and I'm sure you have your own, but my all-time
never-to-be-topped favorite war movie is BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI.
It's David Lean's three-hour masterpiece starring Alec Guinness and
William Holden. It's not just one of the greatest war films ever made,
it's one of the greatest movies PERIOD ever made. And it's in
Cinemascope! Here's the trailer:
33 comments :
Thanks for the wonderful post, Ken. I couldn't agree more about The Bridge on the River Kwai. And all of your recommendations are excellent.
But I have to ask... Since this is in part a writing blog, don't you think Saving Private Ryan has some lousy writing? To me, it's a very overrated movie. Yes, it has great moments. The battle scenes are masterful, and devastating. But so much of the movie seems contrived, with one cliche after another. A lot of the dialogue is padding. And the cemetery scenes that begin and end the movie are so maudlin I can hardly watch them. Norman Rockwell meets Aaron Copland.
I have found that to suggest to some people that Saving Private Ryan isn't the greatest war movie ever causes severe offense. And to suggest it is egregiously flawed, but with moments of genius, is to invite open contempt.
Anyway, you're a writer, as are some of your commenters. What do you all think?
And why not turn this into a Friday question: Are there any supposedly "great" movies that you have a hard time enjoying because you can't get past the poor script?
My all time favorite war movie is Kelly's Heroes, starring Clint Eastwood, Telly Savalas, Don Rickles, and a slew of fabulous actors. It's a heist movie wrapped inside a war movie inside a comedy, with a wonderful over-the-top performance by Donald Sutherland as Oddball, the tank commander. It's streaming on Amazon and several other services but not for free, $2.99 rental mostly.
Today's Republicans will watch a World War II movie and say "Wait, which side is supposed to be the bad guys?"
This has been the most surreal Memorial Day for me, because it's the first Memorial Day in which my dad was among the graves I visited, as he died back in November.
The last few years of his life, he dealt with COPD and emphysema from a lifetime of smoking . . . even so, if he had just followed his doctors' orders, and regularly did the breathing exercises that were instructed of him, and rebuilt his strength, he could still be here today, but he just didn't do so. Admittedly, he was actually old enough to be my grandfather, so I knew I would probably be looking at his grave maybe before I ever reached 50, but I doubt I would be looking at his grave at only 32.
He was a Vietnam veteran, but even so, VA was only willing to help so much . . . sure, they eventually got him placed into a hospice facility during he final weeks . . . out of town . . . and after he died, they did get him a plot at a veteran's cemetery . . . but, that's about the extent of their help. They told my mom that they would reimburse her up to $1,000 of the funeral/burial expenses, but after that was said and done, they decided she wasn't eligible for any reimbursement whatsoever because he technically didn't die of any service-related injury or misfortune. We couldn't even afford an actual funeral or burial for him, so we ended up having to have him cremated which bothered me immensely - it's like it wasn't enough that he was dead, he had to be killed again after he was dead.
He wasn't exactly the World's Great Dad, I'll admit . . . certainly not the Ward Cleaver type . . . if anything, I would say he was more of a Frank Costanza/Frank Barone with some Archie Bunker/Fred Sanford undertones . . . but he did gradually mellow out as he got older to the point that he could be a groovy old dude in his own way . . . either way, he was still my dad, and I still loved him, and I do miss him.
I wonder how our deceased veterans would react to businesses "honoring" them every Memorial Day with discounts. There is a Sergeant on the beaches of Normandy holding the hand of a dying soldier going, "Don't worry son, someday someone is going to get zero down, zero due at signing in their SUV purchase because of what you did here".
Have you read the book of your favorite war movie? There is no William Holden character and it ends very differently. Both the book and the film are excellent which, as you surely know, is atypical.
"The Best Years of Our Lives" (1946) Seven Oscars, including Best Picture.
Amen, David. As for war movies, THE LONGEST DAY is high on my list which TCM wil have on tonight. Have a safe Memorial Day and thank you for your service.
Yeah, a war movie today. I think I'll watch my favorite, Mike Nichols's Catch-22, a movie that reminds me that war, and the military are madness. I recall some of those same points being made by a little movie that came out the same year, M*A*S*H. You might remember it.
My dad was a WWII vet. When I read Catch-22 the first time, back in high school, my dad read it also, as he often read books I'd read to monitor what I was putting into my head, a much better approach than Mother's. She just flatly forbade me to read various stuff that clashed with her insane world view. Mother was a devout Christian Scientist - a belief that eventually killed her, as I told her for 30 years it would - so she was certifiably insane. Mother's approach had the flaw that anytime she forbade me to read something (Like A Streetcar Named Desire, for instance, which she termed "Filth," from her smug ignorance, having never read it nor seen it herself), I immediately read whatever she'd banned. I read them at school, where Mother couldn't get at my books. She even phoned my drama teacher to ask her to help her keep me from reading what she disapproved of. My teacher told her, "Mrs. McEwan, I have absolutely no control whatever over what Douglas reads, and neither do you. And the sooner you realize and accept this, the better." (This is why, over half a century later, that teacher, now in her 90s, is still one of my closest friends.)
So Dad read Catch-22, and he didn't think it was funny. He thought it was just on-the-nose accurate. To him, it was like a documentary about military incompetence. He said, "That was exactly what it was like. That is exactly what the officers were like." (Dad spent the war stateside, working as a chemist - he was a chemist - in an army weapons lab at a base near Spokane, working in Chemical Weapons Development. My dad was one of the inventors of napalm, an "achievement" he was deeply ashamed of to the day he died.)
Oh, and yes, The Bridge on the River Kwai is indeed a GREAT movie! James Donald gets it so, so, so right in his final line: "Madness! Madness!"
My dad used to try to justify societal idiocies (Not all of which he thought were idiocies) to me with an un-ironic mention of "The Wisdom of Our Ancestors," to which I always replied "WHAT wisdom of our ancestors? We still have wars. We still have religion. We still have ignorance and stupidity. We still have a set of arbitrary 'Sexual Mores' that cause misery and ruined lives. We still have bigotry and racism and homophobia. If our ancestors had truly had wisdom, war and religion and want and prejudice would all be eradicated." (As a raving homophobe himself, Dad couldn't quite see how still having homophobia was a failing of the race. He thought people were right to be mean to other people over who they screwed. My most-immediate "Ancestor" lacked Wisdom himself.)
May I second William Wyler's THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES. Fredric March, Dana Andrews, Myrna Loy, Teresa Wright, Harold Russell. Bet Picture of 1946. I also enjoy Otto Preminger's IN HARMS WAY from 1965. John Wayne, Kirk Douglas as a bad guy/hero, for me the most well written character, and Kirk squeezes everything out of the words; Patricia Neal, and many others including Henry Fonda in a supporting role, Burgess Meredith, Paula Prentiss. Lots of good story threads in this one about people serving in the Pacific. As a teenager one of my favorite books was CATCH-22 and I enjoy Mike Nichols' movie version with a Buck Henry script. Alan Arkin as Yossarian, Bob Newhart as Major Major, Jon Voight as Milo Minderbinder.An important movie during my teenage developmental years, and if you've seen the movie, you know why. Again, Paula Prentiss.
One of my favorites is Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison, with Deborah Kerr and Robert Mitchum.
Also:
So Proudly We Hail!
Stairway to Heaven
The Miracle of Morgan's Creek
To Be or Not to Be
Don't forget the movie about the final war, "Dr. Strangelove."
So many good movies are mentioned above. I would add "We Were Soldiers" and "Blackhawk Down". And the masterpiece "Come and See". Obscenity and horror of war is expressed without glorifying a battle or death.
Whoops. The anonymous comment with "Come and See" was mine.
Sorry, I meant amem, Ken.
A few more:
Two Jean Arthur classics, The More the Merrier and The Impatient Years
I Was a Male War Bride
Christmas in Connecticut
A Guy Named Joe
...and if you see "Paths of Glory", skip "Breaker Morant", which is roughly the same movie, with Australian accents.
Also, I would add "Glory" to the list of great war movies. I even got a chance to shake Edward Zwick's hand after I saw it.
When it comes to American war movies, I think one of the best movies to memorialize their service is the 1951 "Go For Broke" - a too-little known movie about the Japanese American troops of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team.
This is an amazing movie for many reasons. It does not shirk from the terrible bigotry they faced and overcame, but its also really cool that some of the real-life members of the regiment are actors in the film and do very well for themselves (I think at least one was a performer before entering WWII).
Another thing I really like about it is members of the regiment also served as technical advisors for the film - helping to recreate some of their better known battles and exploits. What this ends up meaning is that not every scene has the visceral excitement of many famous war films, but they also seem more authentic and what real battle would be like (minus the blood and guts, this was 1951 after all).
Another great film that very few people now about anymore (no doubt because it is a silent movie) is "The Big Parade" about WWI - when that conflict was still fresh in the minds of the people who made it. Some of the No Man's Land battle scenes have been copied in subsequent movies throughout the decades. Charlie Chaplin's "Shoulder at Arms" also holds up as a slice of WWI trenches life as well as being very funny.
For honoring the non-American troops but darn fine movies are the recent "1918", the French "Wooden Crosses", Japanese "Fires on the Plain".
Brian Phillips: agree am a big fan of Glory.
Go Tell the Spartans
Gallipoli
Mr. McEwan, thank you for not calling CATCH-22 "antiwar," as so many have. Joseph Heller always insisted he was completely in favor of World War II and proud to serve in the Army Air Corps like his characters. What drove him crazy was the army itself and its insane logic. I wish he had lived long enough to tell us if Jared Kushner reminded him of Milo Minderbinder.
I know Ken is not fond of THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES but it's the first movie to deal with post-traumatic stress before it was properly understood. The director William Wyler was himself a disabled veteran, having lost most of his hearing filming the documentary "Memphis Belle." Read Mark Harris's FIVE CAME BACK.
Spielberg's Empire of the Sun is underrated.
Casualties of War
The Thin Red Line (the Terrence Malick version)
Allied
Inglourious Basterds
Not strictly a war film but you can't go wrong with Indiana Jones killing Nazis in Raiders of the Lost Ark
Twelve O'Clock High. More about leadership than war.
"The Great Escape" is a favorite of mine. I've seen it many times but have read Paul Brickhill's book over and over again, every five years or so, the same now-dogeared paperback that I bought 50 years ago. While the film is great, the book, a first-hand account by a man who was part of the whole thing, is even better. If you like the film, find the book. It's an incredible true story that no motion picture could ever fully tell.
I'd say the same for "The Bridge on the River Kwai." A great film, but read Pierre Boulle's novel, "The Bridge Over the River Kwai." Like "The Great Escape," the film was somewhat Americanized in translation, adding characters for the American audience.
I like a good anti-war movie, and a good war movie that has an anti-war subtext, as so many of the good ones do. The Americanization of Emily is an enjoyable satire. I especially like the James Garner character's speech to a deluded war widow condemning the glorification of war.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reUstMn4bM8
Excellent list (particularly pleased to see the unjustly neglected Duck, You Sucker), but you left off one of the best anti-war films, The Americanization of Emily, one of Chayefsky's best scripts and the personal favorite of both Garner and Andrews.
"Buttermilk Sky said...
Mr. McEwan, thank you for not calling CATCH-22 'antiwar,' as so many have."
Aaaah, you're welcome? It's not exactly pro-war. Yossarian saw no justification for all these strangers trying to kill him. He took it personally. The insanity of the military is a reflection and product of the madness of war. But I can see why Heller found it a necessary war to end by winning. The war in Ukraine right now is madness, but it's the madness of one man with way too much power for someone who has clearly gone insane, and the Ukrainians must fight it, and we must support them in it, before Putin's madness escalates into the End of Mankind.
I had the joy of meeting Joe Heller back in the late 1970s. I had him all to myself for about 20 minutes, and it was a fascinating talk. He signed my copies of Catch-22, Something Happened and Good as Gold. In the latter, he wrote in my copy, "For Douglas McEwan, who knows how to write comedy. Please feel free to steal any jokes you like, if you find any good enough." I loved having a handwritten carte blanche to plagiarize Heller, though I never took him up on it.
I know that BAND OF BROTHERS was a mini-series, not a movie. It is, however, an example of storytelling at its finest.
A few thoughts:
Other watchable recommendations certainly ought to include the Band Of Brothers episodes, which are done very much in the same vein as Saving Private Ryan but all things considered way more realistic. And Kelly's Heroes is always good fun too, and hase some absolutely terrific acting by big names. Also throw in some Where Eagles Dare, A Bridge Too Far, The Longest Day, Slaughterhouse Five, The Great Escape, All Quiet On The Western Front while you're at it.
As for "volunteering", in all likelihood they aren't volunteering to put themselves in harm's way in some hellhole, but mostly just making a cost vs. benefit calculation ending up with the conclusion that for them this line of occupation is worth the risk. It's first and foremost a career choice and a job, nothing more. No need to go all-out on jingoism. Glorifying this is completely inappropriate, and frankly quite a bit annoying (and yes, I'm speaking from experience).
As for "given their lives for our freedom", it's very much unbecoming of you to repeat this nonsensical propaganda line born out of American militarism and nationalism. More accurate would be "whose lives have been TAKEN from them for all sorts of reasons, the least of which usually have anything to do with freedom of any sort, particularly nowadays".
A few thoughts:
Other watchable recommendations certainly ought to include the Band Of Brothers episodes, which are done very much in the same vein as Saving Private Ryan but all things considered way more realistic. And Kelly's Heroes is always good fun too, and hase some absolutely terrific acting by big names. Also throw in some Where Eagles Dare, A Bridge Too Far, The Longest Day, Slaughterhouse Five, The Great Escape, All Quiet On The Western Front while you're at it.
As for "volunteering", in all likelihood they aren't volunteering to put themselves in harm's way in some hellhole, but mostly just making a cost vs. benefit calculation ending up with the conclusion that for them this line of occupation is worth the risk. It's first and foremost a career choice and a job, nothing more. No need to go all-out on jingoism. Glorifying this is completely inappropriate, and frankly quite a bit annoying (and yes, I'm a faggot speaking from experience).
As for "given their lives for our freedom", it's very much unbecoming of you to repeat this nonsensical propaganda line born out of American militarism and nationalism. More accurate would be "whose lives have been TAKEN from them for all sorts of reasons, the least of which usually have anything to do with freedom of any sort, particularly nowadays".
I would add GOOD MORNING VIETNAM to the list.
Also, even though I'm no fan of the military or war films, the first twenty minutes of FULL METAL JACKET must be seen by everyone.
Dingus or Marcus, I could not agree with you more.
Marcus, Dingus & Fungus: Solicitors to the Stars.
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