When do war movies matter?

The answer is, when they are good.

There is an unwritten commandment when it comes to movies about war, "Thou shall not politicize!"

War is not fought by Republicans or Democrats. It is fought by men and women. Up until the end of the Vietnam War, many of them were drafted, forced to serve but side by side they did just that next to the others volunteering to go. It is not one state sending citizens, but all states sending them, praying for their safe return, grieving for the losses, honoring those making it back home and trying to do their best to make sure the rest of their lives are not years of suffering for having served. That's about as simple as it can get.

War is not pretty but returning from it can become an ugly experience. War should not be glamorized with a hero doing it all himself, but show people working together to make it back home. This is about sending humans to fight against other humans they personally have nothing against but because of what the country decides it needs, they go, risk their lives, watch the backs of their brothers and miss their families. War changes them just as every experience other humans have changes them as well.

Few have gone, fewer have returned and even fewer have survived.

Less than 10 percent of the population of the USA have served in the military, less have served in combat. We count the dead fallen in combat itself, but somehow manage to avoid counting the numbers of the fallen because of combat. We don't count fallen by toxic, chemical exposures. We don't count the fallen by suicide on the monuments to our war dead. We don't count the family members paying the price for combat because someone they loved went but did not return the same way. There is much we don't count on when we send them but when they come back they then decide to return to being a Democrat or Republican, return to their states and neighborhoods as they try to return to being a civilian/veteran. While they are there, they are brothers, they are family and they won't allow anyone to mess with their families no matter what they disagree on.

Movies need to understand this and when the script writer does, when they try to portray human life, then magic happens. It did when The Best Years of Our Lives came out.

The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) is producer Samuel Goldwyn's classic, significant American film about the difficult, traumatic adjustments (unemployment, adultery, alcoholism, and ostracism) that three returning veteran servicemen experienced in the aftermath of World War II. In more modern times, Coming Home (1978) portrayed the same plight of the returning serviceman. The major stars, who each gave the performance of their lives in this Best Picture winner, were:

Fredric March as the eldest returning veteran, alcoholic Army Sergeant Al Stephenson, married to loyal Milly (Myrna Loy)

Dana Andrews as handsome Air Force bombadier Fred Derry, involved in two romances - with party-girl wife Marie (Virginia Mayo), and in a new love relationship with Al's daughter Peggy (Teresa Wright)

Harold Russell (almost uncredited in the film) as sailor Homer Parrish (a WWII vet), the hometown's former football hero, with fiancee/girlfriend Wilma (Cathy O'Donnell)

The germinal idea for the literate, meticulously-constructed film came from a Time Magazine pictorial article (August 7, 1944) that was then re-fashioned into a novel titled Glory for Me by commissioned author MacKinlay Kantor. Kantor's blank-verse novel was the basis for an adapted screenplay by distinguished Pulitzer Prize winning scriptwriter Robert E. Sherwood (his earlier works were The Petrified Forest and Idiot's Delight).

The ironic title refers to the troubling fact that many servicemen had 'the best years of their lives' in wartime, not in their experiences afterwards in peacetime America when they were forced to adapt to the much-changed demands and became the victims of dislocating forces. However, it could be argued that the servicemen also gave up and sacrificed 'the best years of their lives' - their youthful innocence and health - by serving in the military and becoming disjointed from normal civilian life.



The superb, eloquent, and realistically-intimate film was nominated for eight Academy Awards and won seven Oscars

Real-life double amputee (from a ship explosion) and one of the cast's inexperienced actors - Harold Russell received an additional Special Honorary Oscar "for bringing hope and courage to fellow veterans" for his first performance.

read more here

http://www.filmsite.org/besty.html

Maybe this is why the Hurt Locker managed to do what the other movies could not do. War is not pretty but after war is even a harder story to tell at times. We need more like The Best Years of Our Lives so that the price of war will be understood as being a debt unpaid.

'The Hurt Locker' may rewrite script on Iraq war movies
By Joe Neumaier
DAILY NEWS MOVIE CRITIC

Wednesday, February 3rd 2010, 4:00 AM

In the nearly seven years since U.S. forces went into Iraq, attempts to dramatize that experience on film have largely fallen flat. Movies as varied as "Brothers," "In the Valley of Elah," "Home of the Brave," "Stop-Loss," "Redacted," "The Lucky Ones" and "Grace Is Gone" weren't given much respect.

"The Hurt Locker" may change all that.

Nominated yesterday for nine Academy Awards — tying "Avatar" for nods in the Oscars to be handed out March 7 — director Kathryn Bigelow's action drama may be a game-changer, an Iraq film that's a true artistic success, if not a financial one. (The movie, now on DVD, has taken in less than $20 million since its limited release last summer, just about breaking even.)



Read more: The Hurt Locker