A round table of WW2 veterans telling their war stories. The film is strangely constructed like a musical piece. The soldiers tell stories so similar yet different in detail that they may be likened to the Kubler-Ross steps to accepting death. All of the veterans are blind and their stories progress in parallel, the voices used back and forth like a musical arrangement, changing tone and rhythm as the stories shift along their own personal stations of the cross. They awaken blind or nearly blind, they think that they'll slowly regain their sight, in a month, they want to die, they prey for death, they ask the doctors for it. They make the adjustment, but now, twenty five years later, they remain bitter. Ultimately this is a symphony in bitterness. Though their faces' inertness belies the intensity of their bitterness, time, acting like some ultimate botox, as if to hide that bothersome aspect from would be sympathetic observers. The bitterest one, the artist who used to like to paint landscapes is the bitterest of all with the most frozen face of all.
2 Reviews
A simple film of raw power and emotion - gripping and overwhelmingly distressing in feeling.
cermacora13 March 2000
A group of veterans recount a horrifying experience when trapped in a minefield, resulting in each losing their sight.
This is an incredibly powerful anti-war film, showing the horrors of war first hand, in stark close-ups without gratuitous gore. The physical injuries are not quite so emphasized as much as the emotional scaring, with the soldiers expressing their deep regret and longing for a better quality of life.
The film is edited in such a way that story becomes one detailed account, with each character providing his piece of the story. Their collective suffering seems akin to witnessing an AA meeting, except that this group wish to make it clear to the world that they were victims of misguided patriotism, with no control over their fate.
This is an incredibly powerful anti-war film, showing the horrors of war first hand, in stark close-ups without gratuitous gore. The physical injuries are not quite so emphasized as much as the emotional scaring, with the soldiers expressing their deep regret and longing for a better quality of life.
The film is edited in such a way that story becomes one detailed account, with each character providing his piece of the story. Their collective suffering seems akin to witnessing an AA meeting, except that this group wish to make it clear to the world that they were victims of misguided patriotism, with no control over their fate.
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