by Kaleem Hasan
To not know what happened before one was born is to always remain a child – Cicero.
I am always happy to see a Hollywood movie emerge on the classical world even if the results are less than one would ideally hope for. The West cannot be understood without the Greek and Roman heritage. At the present monent, our entire globe is, in a way, western. Therefore the world becomes incomprehensible without an adequate engagement with this ancient past. To the extent that when Hollywood movies attempt such subjects there is always the possibility that people will get interested in the subject and look to other avenues for further explorations in this regard. In this way these Hollywood attempts provide a valuable service even if the films in question are considered intrinsically poor.
In recent years we have seen Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy and Oliver Stone’s Alexander. Troy was a reasonably compelling action flick masquerading as Greek epic with Achilles as gym-hero even if Brad Pitt was not entirely inappropriate in the part of the most famous man-child of Western consciousness. The film has its CGI inauthenticities (this is, unfortunately, becoming the norm, as Gladiator, among others had the same problem, that there is an element of fakeness to modern CGI – Rome looked far more real in the older Hollywood epics), it had all the dynamism of a romp through a legendary history and yet it nonetheless introduced viewers, especially younger ones, to the tradition. In an odd way in the services of this pragmatic concern the film’s superficiality was even less welcome as these same viewers would be far less likely to go back to the sources if they didn’t enjoy the film in the first place.
Stone’s Alexander was one of the most reviled films of recent years. The original theatrical release was 175m long before Stone recut the film on DVD down to 167m, but even this didn’t change any minds about the film. Andrew Sarris was in fact the most important gentler voice on the film, suggesting that the film would be nowhere near the top of his list of films for the year, but nowhere near the bottom either. In any case I was sufficiently persuaded by the reviews not to visit the film at the time.
More recently I heard that Stone had eventually come up with another director’s cut (called The Final Cut) which was 214m long. Belonging to a strange human breed that is addicted to the concept of extended cuts, no matter how meaningless these might be and perhaps belonging to an even stranger minority of one that refuse to watch the totally mediocre unless it comes with such length added on (the phallic metaphor will have been revealing and not least because of the supplementary suggestions of the adding on!), I decided to give this Final Cut (hoping this wouldn’t be the unkindest one, but too late to avoid the Bobbitian at this stage!) a chance.
I was quite pleasantly surprised. Stone, in the introduction, speaks of how this was the most freedom he ever had putting a film together without all the studio stresses, audience pressures, et al. In essence, this is the Alexander he wanted to make and screen. Having not seen the theatrical version I have no idea how this version departs specifically from its predecessors but, from the reviews, I am led to believe that the narration is more linear and straightforward in the earlier version and most of the central plot lines are far less nuanced.
The supreme problem with Stone’s film is that Colin Farrell in the title role offers a somewhat singular case of miscasting. He simply does not suggest the figure who is now more mythos than historical personage. Where Pitt suggests the man-child that Achilles is, Alexander in Farrell’s hands simply becomes a child. Confounding this is Stone’s curious introduction of an Oedipal angle into the whole story which, with some other factors, makes this movie into a bit of a psycho-drama.
At the same time the film does not have the kind of inherent drama that this subject calls out for at every turn. Stone has ultimately expended a great deal of thought into this subject and, as the post-history of the release would suggest, has continued to be obsessed with it. A number of the reviewers complained at the historical inaccuracies but Stone’s self-confessed attempt was always to fashion an old-style Hollywood epic. Even otherwise I am not very moved by such criticism unless the film aims to be a totally realistic biopic. I do not believe this was Stone’s primary aim.
The Final Cut relates the story of Alexander by way of Ptolemy’s narration more than four decades after Alexander’s death. The narration has a somewhat didactic quality to it and comes off as stilted at times but has the virtue of framing the history as a narrated tale. The film keeps jumping back and forth in time; Ptolemy keeps filling in the gaps but there is still a sense of disorientation induced in the viewer which mirrors Alexander’s own vertigo as he keeps extending his imperial reach.
For Stone, Alexander offers a mirror into the present. Macedonian Alexander could be American Bush. The film maintains a specificity about this and the analogies throughout are hard to miss. Interestingly, Stone starts the film off with the Virgilian ” fortune favours the bold” and as the movie progresses one realises that Alexander is in fact a kind of Roman and the descent into hell of his overreach has an almost nightmarish quality to it much like the Aeneid. The parallel with the present also works because rather than glorify Alexander in an unthinking way, Stone converts him into the perfect emblem of the imperialist mindset and his journey, which gets darker and darker over time, is a potent symbol of the imperial drive in every one of its historical manifestations. Because Alexander is also so childlike in many ways, so unrestrained and almost oddly untrained in others, he evokes the Commander in Chief of the present even more. This should not be considered flattering to the latter. Nor is it ungenerous on Stone’s part to make Alexander such a flawed human being, because Stone is not attempting a pure biopic. He is intrigued by Alexander as imperialist not as mythologized super-conqueror. In his laconic words, he wanted to show the ‘dark side’ of Alexander.
But there is a Buddhist Alexander who creeps up in the later stages of the film. The Alexander who, from the Oedipal traumas to the wars that drain him mentally and emotionally, is always somewhat close to becomi ng totally unhinged and, in fact, just gets to that point by the end of his life’s journey. The illness that actually kills him becomes the manifestation of an inner rotting that has been ongoing for some years. As Alexander conquers greater parts of his known world, he also keeps suffering a kind of identity crisis that recalls something akin to the protagonists’ dilemma in ‘The Sheltering Sky’ (Bowles). Put differently, the encounter with exotica that is always such a stimulant both for the traveller and the conqueror is one involving great risk, not only for those who fall under the gaze of either, because the gaze is returned. As Nietzsche said in a different register, “when you stare into an abyss, sometimes the abyss stares back at you”. It is second movement that Alexander in Stone’s film cannot quite digest. He never attains Nirvana to any degree but seems constantly tortured and it is perhaps not too hard to imagine him doing an ‘Asoka’ in some ways, had he lived longer. And he is not too far from the land of Asoka when he dies. He has certainly been close to it.
Cinematographically, Stone’s filmis often striking; my own pick is a battlefield shot that occurs in the later portion of the film when the whole screen is bathed in a kind of psychedelic red. At this point, the film increasingly at such moments makes war far less concrete and far more hallucinatory than in the earlier stages. Where earlier there is pomp, ceremony and precision, later there is only the blur of nightmare.
To sum up, I think this Final Cut of the film is well worth revisiting. I did not intend this piece to be a review but more of a reflection on the film that recognizes its weaknesses but at the same time highlights the strengths and ultimately finds the latter winning out over the former. The film has enormous flaws, for sure, but also remarkable strengths related to the conception of the subject and the cinematic language accordingly employed. If this is a misfire, it is a valuable one.
A valiant effort Kaleem to redeem this flawed effort.
At best any ‘fiction’ film on a figure of ancient history will be speculative, and to invest the story as some allegory of contemporary US politics is as arrogant as it is dangerous. A psychodrama is ok for a contemporary persona, but ‘Megalexandros’ is a mythic as well as an historical figure, and his story if it is to be sold to a wider audience must have a magisterial sweep. You need a Pasolini or an Angelopoulos to pull it off.
“If this is a misfire, it is a valuable one.”
Alas Kaleem, does indeed make a most erudite and scholarly defense for this film in his longer incarnation. I like the conveyance of Alexander’s character as posed by Stone, who is a kind of Macedonian Bush at one point, but later is more of a Buddhist adherent.
Great point there Tony about needing a seminal figure like either Pasolini or Angelopoulos to completely pull this off. Ah, TRAVELING PLAYERS, nows there’s one by the Greek director that remains unforgettable.
Extraordinary piece of writing here by Kaleem, as usual.
There is little doubt that Mr. Hasan has written an exceptional consideration of this film, but I am no fan of “Alexander” in either the original or extended version. There are just too many issues, and Farrell is too much of a flake as an actor.
………I much prefer ‘Troy’ but I know a number of people who have said the longer version rights some wrongs. A lot of credit must go to Kaleem Hasan for offering up the positive side……
This may not have been Oliver Stone’s primary aim Mr. Hasan, but the marketing for the film and what people expected from it was precisely that–the historical accuracy–I am not sure you can change the rules half way through. I think Stone really wanted to have it both ways, and as a result it succeeded in neither intent. I appreciate this attempt to artistically validate this mess, but I simply don’t see it the way you do. Still your writing is outstanding.
wasn’t it suggested that Oliver Stone didn’t make Alexander “gay” enough? I don’t think this actor has enough depth for the role, but the movie and he were fun and nice to look at.
Thanks very much all for the comments..
I do agree that Farrell makes for a very poor lead..
In a strange way Alexander in Stone’s version is also a bit like one of the great Indian Emperors, Asoka. Legend has it that the latter turned Buddhist after the Battle of Kalinga where though he won he was also appalled by the ‘killing fields’ he saw. Whenever I think of this story I am always reminded of that climactic battle aftermath in Kagemusha.
I am not as down on this film as many here are, although it is no cinematic milestone to say the least. Farrell is definitely miscast, or he doesn’t have enough ‘inner resources,’ but as a visual panorama of the times, it still has its share of fascination. This is a terrific and thought-provoking review.
Hey guys (and gals) give Kaleem a break. He’s trying to present the other side of the coin for a film that was summarily dismissed even before it was released. I think the lead actor was an albatross, yes, but some of the ideas here are deserving of one’s attention. As others have mentioned it is engaging to watch.
I think it’s too long; as a result it’s a major bore.
I can’t argue that this is one of Kaleem’s best pieces. What’s so frustrating is that he almlost has you believing it. He could write on the psychological undertones in The Creepoing Terror and almost have you believe it. He’s a dangerous man.
Haven’t seen the longer Alexander, so can’t really comment, though Colin Farrell’s performance truly is one of the great upchuck performances in modern cinema. Let’s face it, since Nixon – a flawed but engrossing film – Stone has just added to his manure pile. I much preferred Troy. It was ridiculous, but it had a mythic grandeur about it…and Peter O’Toole…
Allan: Ha!
Incidentally I consider Nixon an excellent film though I’m not going to argue it’s perfect.
Thanks Peter..
Mr. Hasan, would you consider this film among Oliver Stone’s most underated achievements?
I saw this twice, and I’m still not sure what to make of it, and what he was really trying to do.
You adamently argue against it as a biopic, yet you are not quite certain yourself if it’s some kind of steam-of-consciousness or abstract historical work. Granted you writing is very impressive, but I am still perplexed.
You did say at the end that “the former wins out over the latter” meaning there’s more good than bad. That much I did understand.
I agree, Kaleem, Nixon isn’t perfect, but it was underrated in many quarters. Of course, it looks like a masterpiece compared to the bilge he’s put out since.
Now here’s another film that boggles the mind, but not in a good way either.
John: I would hesitate to call Alexander underrated. I found some redeeming features to it and it’s a film that I am inclined to revisit because of these. Nixon is definitely the better achievement though this is probably not underrated. At the end of the day, and as long as we’re confined to more ‘commercial’ cinema, I guess I am willing to forgive flaws as long as the director offers enough of what I would consider ‘interesting’. Because there are so many ‘perfect’ films that are still very mediocre for a variety of reasons. Now if we move over to cinema as a pure artistic medium then the questions change. I found find it harder to overlook ‘flawed’ Kurosawa for example. With artistic films a certain essential ‘competence’ is always a given. One then has to look for deeper patterns. Commercial cinema though is mostly superficial even if it often makes for great entertainment. In this instance it’s certainly not illegitimate to ask whether one film is better made than another but one need not be an ‘aesthetic’ purist either. So for example I enjoy Gone with the Wind quite a bit. I don’t go to it for an authentic understanding of Civil War dynamics. It’s cheesy but what does one expect?! However if Welles made something on a similar subject I would have a very different set of standards. Much as we would judge Beethoven’s Fidelio (considered inadequate by most) differently from the Star Wars soundtrack. Getting back to Stone’s Alexander I don’t consider this director ‘important’ by any stretch but I do find him interesting from time to time. I do not expect much more.
With cinema ultimately we most often confuse ‘mere entertainment’ with ‘art’. Some of this is due to the very nature of the medium. But this is only part of it. Music should allow an equal blurring of the boundaries but most of the time people are quite clear that there’s something that separates Mozart from the Beatles. In ‘literature’ this confusion rarely arises. The same holds for painting or architecture and so forth. With cinema the critical establishment has never quite woken up to this fact. This is why when we operate with various kinds of aesthetic arguments cinema generally excludes itself. Because critical commentary (barring rare exceptions) has been mostly behind the curve in this sense. The kind of rigorous formalistic analysis that all other art forms have always invited has so far not been used as a standard for cinema (even if there are many such studies on the medium). As a result I think we have a very inadequate understanding of what the medium ‘means’ or ‘represents’.
Kaleem I disagree with you here. Your view is sadly elitist. High art has no monopoly on relevance or meaning.
As far as film criticism is concerned, the formalist elitist approach to cinema ran its course in the early 20th century and rightly withered away from irrelevance.
Tony: if this view is elitist then you must be willing to concede that Beethoven or Elton John are both ‘equal’ artists and the difference is only one of perspective. You must also be willing to accept that the Chrysler building in NY is architecture as interesting as Bilbao depending on one’s view in these matters. You must furthermore be willing to say that Dan Brown is as good as Charles Dickens or Leo Tolstoy depending on one’s tastes. If all of this is not true then why would one have that rule for cinema? Don’t cinema’s great artists deserve as much? If Renoir can be equated with Roman Holiday based on the popularity and ‘classic’ status of the latter then so can Faulkner be compared with Daniel Steele on similar grounds!
I disagree with the formalist bit for a couple of reasons. First off I was not thinking of ‘formalism’ as such as an art movement but more any theoretical approach that looks at the aesthetics of film-making. If someone can make a case that Roman Holiday is an interesting a film as La Dolce Vita, or is shot as interestingly, or means more than the latter I’m all ears! Barring this we’re left in the entertainment category where we each have our tastes and I for one still love movies like Speed!
But ‘formalism’ itself is an idea that’s lost currency. Many ideas do. Sometimes they return. Some would argue that French theory that has dominated Anglo-American academies for decades now is really ‘formalism’ in a new bottle. This itself is an academic discussion!
But leaving this aside why ‘elitist’? It might surprise (and even dismay) many to learn that ‘art’ is unfortunately not a ‘democracy’! To understand Schoenberg’s revolution one absolutely has to know a great deal of the history of Western classical music and not just of the atonal kind. To truly understand why Wordsworth is so important one has figure what his revolution was in poetry and what the history has been since. So on and so forth. The same holds for cinema.
This does not mean that anyone is barred from ‘art’ based on less education and training. But it does mean that one’s access to an art form can be more limited than that of someone else. I love reading about the Civil War but it would be quite absurd if I considered my understanding here to be on the same footing as that of James McPherson (the pre-eminent authority on the subject in his generation)! The same goes for any field. I love listening to Tchaikovsky’s Winter Symphony but I rather doubt that I understand it and consequently appreciate the way Charles Rosen does! Because there is an element of appreciation that is directly linked to understanding. We can enjoy Macbeth as a story. it’s quite a thriller. With better resources in the language we can appreciate the poetry and the sentiments in it and thereby increase the pleasure we derive from the work. There is yet another level where we figure out how Shakespeare constructed many of his scenes and so forth. Further still we examine his meter in detail or all his poetic resources etc. Depending on where one is with all of this one’s pleasure could be enhanced. If one is just a basic reader one could enjoy Macbeth very much without necessarily ‘understanding’ why the work is really so great. There is so much tradition gives us by way of such ‘canonization’. That doesn’t mean that we necessarily understand such judgments on our own! Here training comes in. And this is so for any field of human endeavor.
But again ‘art’ should not be confused with ‘democracy’! Nor any serious thought in any walk of human life. But everyone can aspire to the same knowledge. We all have our abilities. We’re not equal in everything. Some people can figure out Plato better than others, some can play basketball better.
To apply for a lawyer’s job it is assumed that one will have ‘learnt’ certain basic requirements. It would be quite absurd to not have acquired this knowledge and to nevertheless have showed up at a law firm expecting a job. Every field requires a certain knowledge. With the arts anyone can ‘experience’ them because anyone can look at a painting, read a book, listen to music. And there’s nothing wrong with this. But this looking or listening are very different from that of the trained eye or ear.
There is nothing elitist about it. It is the basic condition of understanding anything.
And to be even more clear on this anyone can experience art, even be moved by it or whatever. There has to be that experience of art however well informed one is or isn’t. But a certain kind of access is simply closed off to one if one does not have the right tools. This limits one’s experience in matters of art. There is nothing earth-shaking about this observation. To however think that a direct encounter with a work of art is all that one needs is naive.
Thank you Kaleem for your comprehensive response.
Let me say in no manner was I equating, for example, Shakespeare with Steele.
What I am saying is that the quality of an experience, in art or life, has nothing to do with one’s education or some aesthetic hierarchy. Quality as Persig discovered in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, is ineffable and is different for each individual, and wisdom has little to do with education or expertise…
Tony: I completely agree and I’ve already conceded that point. But the corollary to this is that we might not be ready as an audience or as viewers or readers or what have you to ‘receive’ every such experience. Let me make this point using a sports analogy. We can argue about great football teams or players. But what if we weren’t clear about the rules of the game? Or we didn’t know enough about the game’s history? Wouldn’t our arguments one way or the other then be a little odd?
Secondly how do we really ‘define’ experience? A work can move us greatly but does such an immediate ‘effect’ really attest to the work’s quality? There has to be a ‘common’ language within which judgments can be expressed and understood. Yes, we all have our likes and dislikes in these matters. I would never underrate the personal element in all of this but is this enough? Certain works of art don’t do anything for me. But it isn’t contradictory to also say at the same time that these are important works. These just don’t have that kind of impact where I am concerned. There are readers all over America who are enormously moved by Daniel Steele. Many of these readers if not most are just not able to have that same kind of experience with Dostoyevsky. But we wouldn’t wish to grant them democratic rights in matters of judgment even if they have every right to read Steele all their lives.
Does ‘wisdom’ have nothing to do with ‘education’ (understood in the most authentic sense and not merely the question of acquiring specialized degrees)? I am not so sure. Not sure whether any models in human history from East to West would really discard notions of ‘knowledge’ in this way.
I agree with you when you say ‘expertise’. I too would never simply equate formal education with wisdom but then I would never equate this with real education to begin with.
One must be sure that one encounters the ‘ineffable’ and not an impostor..
And it is quite true that ‘knowledge’ does not at all equate ‘experience’ or even ‘understanding’. But without the basics of knowledge the latter might never even get started.
Kaleem, I see where you are coming from, and you argue your case flawlessly, and I deeply respect your views.
What I am trying to say is the ineffable can be found in the prosaic. I have had conversations with peasants that are as profound as Dostoyevsky. Indeed, in The Idiot is not Prince Myshkin a case in point?
“What I am trying to say is the ineffable can be found in the prosaic. ”
I don’t disagree at all Tony.. I was simply arguing on the ‘ineffable’ with respect to art. This is of course not the only source of the ineffable as any good Buddhist knows!
Enthralling discourse here. Congrats to all.
What does the writer think of the earlier film, Alexander the Great is I may ask? I’m sorry to say I found this new film a disaster in a number of ways.
Thanks Joe.. and of course Tony…
David: I don’t mind the earlier Burton one.. a bit flat but it’s alright..
Didn’t care for the Burton version at all.
One still looks for the great Alexander film ultimately. As one does the great Caesar film. In our own ‘imperial’ times one would think the time right for such an undertaking. Unfortunately we only get a Gladiator.
Speaking of which I have a weakness for the extended cut of Kingdom of Heaven.
The one film that I have forever dreamed about but which I doubt I’ll ever see is a canonical movie on the Civil War (US). Of course I’ve always found it deeply disappointing that there isn’t an American War and Peace of the Civil War. Really no great novel on this entire history.
Incidentally this war has always fascinated me more than any other for its tragic as well as mythic dimensions.
And I should add here that I am not at all a fan of the sappiness of both World Wars!
The thing is that America doesn’t really want a War and Peace. To insist it wants or needs a War and Peace belittles the very war itself.
As for the world wars being sappy, one could perhaps only wish that you had been introuced to their sappiness first hand. World War I was the most futile and horrendous of all wars on a purely military standpoint, the trenches of Passchendaele, the Somme, Ypres, the Marne and Verdun amongst the truest visions of Dante’s hell on earth.
World War II being described as sappy is not merely insulting to the millions who died in batle, but to the millions who died at Hitler’s hands in his Final Solution.
Doubtless the response will come back that it was meant on a purely artistic viewpoint – another detached remark with no footing in reality. But doubtless those who fought in the Napoleonic conflicts couldn’t have cared too hoots about War and Peace, Vanity Fair or any other masterpiece written set during their darkest hour.
This is merely another example of not only extreme egotism – bringing in things of absolutely no relevance to Alexander on this thread, but sheer aloofness to the very harsh realities of war, rather than taking everything from an intellectual standpoint. You would have been a conscientious objector in a time of war, but this gives you absolutely no right to describe as sappy a cataclysmic event that took so many lives, in the first case in act of such futile butchery, and in the second the Genocidal lunacy of the second war.
Now, please, enough. History is not there merely to serve as an illustration for the Arts. That comes dangerously close to Nero’s ideas of “if you cannot destroy what can you create?” The Napoleonic Wars didn’t exist for Tolstoy and Thackeray, the Trojan wars didn’t exist for Euripedes and Homer, the Wars of the Roses didn’t exist for Shakespeare, and World War I didn’t exist for Remarque, Hemingway and Fitzgerald. They happened, and were anything but sappy.
I should perhaps add making such a comment in this week of all weeks marks new lows in tastelessness.
Allan: First off relax a bit! I think you know me enough to figure out just how much I am interested in politics, political ethics and so forth. You also know how I go about viewing films. A lot of these are unfair charges and I think you know this. Believe it or not I actually expected a response of this sort from someone on the ‘sappiness’ comment. But I decided to leave it in anyway. Never let it be said that I avoided controversy! But let me start by responding to some of these ‘charges’ even as I start out with the prefatory remark that you are (and I don’t mean this as a right or wrong) rather invested in the World Wars and dare I say there is some good old British colonialism that goes into the mix! I mean that in the sense of it being part perhaps of your educational DNA. On this side of the Atlantic it’s the second world war that is of perennial interest. But let’s get to some rebuttals here:
1)I won’t go in any order. But you’re sounding a little bit like George Bush today with some of those gratuitous remarks, especially the ones on the Holocaust!
2)War is not relevant to Alexander? Total war is not relevant to Alexander? World domination is not relevant to Alexander? What Alexander are we talking about?! In any case Stone certainly intends to hold up a mirror to the present!
3)The first World War was the most horrendous of wars for reasons that are entirely other to the values you are referring to. It was actually a rather pointless war and hopefully you will not force me to list illustrious historians who have advanced such a view. There is no ‘tragedy’ linked to this war because this war had no humanistic ‘meaning’ attached to it (which is why in a sense all humanistic treatments of this war completely miss the point). Industrial slaughter for sure! One always sympathizes for those who lose life or limb in any war but human death in itself (radical as this might sound) does not confer ‘tragedy’ on any event.
There is nonetheless a greater meaning to this war but this is linked to properly philosophical questions of technology and so forth.
But whatever mix one finds in the Great War the Civil War anticipates all of it. A view that again historians are increasingly coming around to. The ‘industrial slaughter’ is amply in evidence in the killing fields of this war. This is the first model for everything that happened in the 20th century. The trench warfare of the Great War is easily presages by similar battles in the Civil War.
In terms of human life lost there is still no comparison of the Civil War (in terms of life lost as a proportion of overall population) with all other US wars combined. This is a startling statistic!
4)The Civil War is for me the most interesting of wars because it is the most ‘metaphysical’. Plato famously said that about those fratricidal Greek wars there among ‘friends, not enemies’ (as Lincoln would have it) there can only be ‘stasis’, not ‘war’. ‘War’ presupposed an absolute ‘other’. I think it’s safe to say that there is not a greater example of fratricidal war in the West than the Civil War, not even the Peloponnesian Wars. So there are properly philosophical questions intrinsically linked with the Civil War that illuminate the very question of war more than the World Wars. What the Great War does is illuminate the question of ‘technology’ more than anything else and this makes it a site of meaning for ‘anti-humanism’ not the converse. Leaving this aside there are of course properly political questions. The Civil War also re-defines America (which is to say a global empire). Defines many conventions of war that followed in its wake. So on and so forth.
Finally I think there is an entire mythic dimension to this war that is absent from the two World Wars.
5)World War 2 was not fought over the Holocaust, regrettably enough. It wasn’t a part of anyone’s calculation. Retrospectively it’s been dubbed the ‘good war’ and a whole industry of hype survives it. Meanwhile the US and Britain were quite happy to ‘ally’ with Stalin, one of the great mass butchers in history. Let’s not be naive, wars are not about human suffering and high ideals!
But if one nonetheless insists on conferring tragic dignity on the victims (which I’m not sure is appropriate for these wars) what of the victims of the atomic explosions and the carpet bombing of cities? Is it ok to indulge in mass murder to speed up victory in a war as long as one has designated oneself as the ‘good’?
6) Both World Wars have spawned industries of nostalgia in Britain and the US. Especially in the former this nostalgia is also connected with the loss of Empire and in turn the great British ‘mental’ depression about the aftermath and the re-ordering of the world.
7)When I used the term ‘sappiness’ this is what I was referring to. The unquestioning nature of most of those films that are in their ultimate ends little more than propaganda pieces (and we know the history of such films in Britain especially!). This is not to suggest that they are also not great entertainment in the bargain. But that is a completely ‘other’ point to the one I was making.
8) Finally for all these reasons there is no war that can be divorced from the ‘representation’ of that war in popular culture and the arts. Hence ‘narrative’ is integrally part of the question as it is part of every human enterprise. ‘Narrative’ and hence ‘artifice’ are part of the very fabric of history. Surely any great historian worth the name illustrates this?!
This is not being completely relativistic about the facts. It is about being alert to the political ends of all representation. More people owe their understanding of WWII or the Great War to Hollywood! Shouldn’t this alert us to something?! There was in this sense a recent book on even the Civil War. About how Hollywood and popular culture had ‘misrepresented’ this war. But in any case 99% of people don’t get their understanding on these events from historians (which itself implies narrativity) but movies that as mediums of mass entertainment are even more politicized as narratives.
9)But again your remarks were very gratuitous especially given the fact that you’ve interacted with me so often before.
So I do stand by my remark.
I am amazed that the comment section here is even more fascinating that the review itself. Mr. Hasan, you really rule the roost here!
The smiley there is unintentional. It should have been point #8.
War is relevant to Alexander the Great, yes, but however eruditely you may say it, you’re still trying to dress up a turd by speaking well of the FILM Alexander.
You say there is no tragedy linked to World War I. You accuse me of being GW Bush, one could accuse you of being J Stalin whereby one death is a tragedy but a million is a statistic. The statement about there being no tragedy about WWI or WWII is so ludicrous as to be infantile, wrapped up in intellectual bullshit.
WWI spelt the end of an entire generation, an entire governing class system, the beginning of the end of the British empires, the end of the Austro-Hungarian empires, and numerous battles where more men were lost in a matter of hours than in the casualuty lists of the entire American Civil War.
The American Civil War was a monumental crossroads in American history, but as a war it was a foregone conclusion, with the North – with greater manpower and industrial strength always going to beat the South. Historically and culturally significant for beginning the long road to equality in the US that even Obama’s election doesn’t signify, but a big step nonetheless. However, the first step, need I say, on world terms, was taken many years earlier in England by William Wilburforce, so to attach world significance to the American Civil War is stretching matters a little.
As for your definition of mythic, well it stands alone among humanity. War is not mythic or metaphysical at its essence, that’s for mouldy historians who wouldn’t know a war from a wart on their backside. War is war, and anyone who talks about the mythology of a war to the veterans thereof would likely find himself left alone in the room like a leper with a hood and bell.
As for the charges of nostalgia re WWI & II, that’s a debatable point, though how the nature of such Civil War set material as Little Women or Gone With the Wind could NOT be seen as nostalgic beggars belief.
Yes, I agree, the moving picture industry, not just Hollywood, influences people’s vision of the World Wars, and can misinterpret, but this is completely a separate issue to the statement about sappiness. Your statement said the wars were sappy. There was nothing whatsoever about its depiction in movies. I agree, many WWII movies, especially old fashioned Hollywood and UK ones, are full of gungo ho and stiff upper lipped stereotypes that have nothing to do with real conflict. But that does not excuse making out the wars themselves to have little meaning on your intellectual level, the only level you care about.
And Peter, you are right, Kaleem does rule the roost, like a condor high up in the mountains looking down on the intellectually inferior. Would that he were still there. And this is the last I will say on this thread, it’s just giving him another soapbox to speak forth from while adjusting the permafrost from his proboscis. More comments on his own thread just further feeds his limitless ego like lies to Pinocchio’s wooden conk.
Peter: Thanks so much. You’re much too kind..
Allan: And to extend some of what I’ve said above (even if you’re familiar with what I’m going to say others aren’t) I would add the following to in essence clarify some of the ‘assumptions’ of what I’ve stated above:
1)Something called ‘art’ should not be opposed to nebulous terms like ‘life’ and ‘reality’ and what not. Because there is no ‘reality’ without the admixture of art, in a direct sense or through popular channels.
Would you say that those war films you cherish so much have absolutely nothing to do with your understanding of those conflicts?! of course not! Well that is then history you are accessing by way of an artistic medium.
Art is what mediates reality. There is no ‘reality’ as such even if we often define our daily lives as being the equivalent of such. It makes a difference whether we understand war through the mediation of Picasso’s Guernica or Hollywood blockbusters. This is where the ‘sappiness’ remark again comes into play.
Let’s move on. What is Churchill without his speeches? When we sum up his achievements don’t we include this ‘artistic’ gesture on his part? What’s Lincoln without the mythology that surrounds him. One could multiply these examples to infinity. Why is this aspect important? Well let’s take an example. Using the popular view (peddled to this day in every US election) the US has always been ‘only’ a force of good. But this of course ignores the sin of slavery, the genocide of Native-Americans. Just two overarching issues that disturb this self-congratulatory narrative. With slavery one could at least indulge in a kind of vulgar historical trade-off where eventual civil rights gains (and now apparently Mr Obama) somehow redress the wrongs of the past. With Native Americans you can’t even do this. How much could they possible care for a ‘force for good’ from which they have been always excluded and by the extinguishing of their people?
Given that there is no history or ‘reality’ without there being also the ‘lacing’ of representation and ‘art’ it makes a difference whether we understand ‘events’ using easy propagandistic films (I don’t mean to be too harsh here but 99% of war films really prop up popular claims about those wars.. eventually there develops a revisionist strand which simply inverts things.. so for example the US gets blamed in equally simplistic ways.. this too doesn’t give us profound answers about what war means.. very few films occupy the ‘in between’.. a great work of art always does this.. this is why I rued the fact that there hadn’t been great literature on the Civil War) or works of art that really illuminate us on the human condition. And there are as you well know very many films that do that.
And I understand that national mythologies are part and parcel of every nation-state. But it is always dangerous to keep peddling these. Therefore responsible works of art and entertainment are always needed. Those that do not merely serve national delusions.
Art in any case is not something abstract ‘out there’. It is what engenders our notions of reality whether by way of historiography, philosophy, literature or what have you. And of course cinema.
You mentioned the Holocaust. The ‘Holocaust Industry’ developed in the US only towards the end of the 60s. Since then it has been endlessly present in popular consciousness as the ultimate evil. These are points to think about in each instance. The politics of each. There is art that fills in the gap. Art that then props up these propositions. Whether by way of cinema or history. there are of course always meaningful exceptions but these prove the exception to the ‘general’ mythology. I will add another historical curiosity here. The Israelis have used the Warsaw Ghetto uprising and the Nazi response as the example of choice to deal with their own Palestinian problem (and the question of rebellious populations in claustrophobic urban spaces). Does this historical curiosity not reveal an enormous ‘problematic’? Is this not something that minimally upsets are understanding of the Holocaust as the ultimate evil when those who were victims decided to borrow the models of those who victimized them? But such questions (present uncomfortably in every society) are never part of the ‘authorized’ narrative or mythology. This is why we have to question what we see or read and really think about these things. There is a whole issue of ‘responsibility’ that comes into play.
I enjoy my war movies as much as anyone else but one should be alert to the danger offered in this sense. Evils like ‘Nazism’ serve the ideological function of totally veiling the evils of the ‘Allies’. One does not have to be morally neutral about Nazism to also understand that the British Empire was responsible for Holocausts aplenty. What is different about the Nazi horror is technology. Much as what is different about WW1 is also technological intervention. Humans could now be slaughtered like animals (and it should not be surprising that human history since has involved the indiscriminate slaughter of both!) and the historical record since shows technology being an indispensable element when it’s question of war. So we have to think through ‘technology’, not only how it changes the question of war but ultimately the question of the human.
I used more examples from war because that’s what I started out with. And I used the same for the art/reality (false) opposition. But to return again to the ‘sappiness’ idea most of these classic films are very problematic for precisely this reason. I am thankful that we had Hemingway or Tolstoy or whoever to document these wars using a certain artistic filter. I am thankful that we always have artists in various fields. Wagner’s Ring offers a better reading of German political excesses in the 20th century than any popular belief or even most popular historians. But one has to understand the Ring for this!
I do not suggest that everyone get involved in such an exercise. But I retain the right to be concerned about the politics of any work, art or entertainment. I would venture that you found my ‘sappiness’ remark so offensive precisely because you’ve imbibed the national mythology on the subject for so long. Think about Remains of the Day (the movie if not the book). Do you think those classes were fighting for any ‘good’?! It’s all politics dressed up as the ‘good’! Those below fight the wars! There’s a good joke about this. A soldier from the ‘lower classes’ returns to Britain and finds a member of the aristocracy hanging out in a club seemingly untouched by anything. The soldier complains that ‘we fought the war to preserve our lifestyle and country and society’. The other retorted ‘ actually ‘you’ fought the war to preserve ‘my’ lifestyle and country and society’! This sounds a bit Marxist but is merely right. But this isn’t something those war films ever get into. When they do we rightly admire those films. But Renoir or Kobayashi are hardly the norm in these matters!
Allan: I’d like to think I’ve been courteous enough and comprehensive enough to respond to everything you said and further amplified my comments as well. I don’t see a point in responding to ad hominem attacks here. I shall only say this — you know not what you speak of. Hopefully others will be able to compare my responses with yours and figure out whether I am a ‘Stalin’ as you suggest and simply inhuman about human suffering and death. They will hopefully be able to comprehend the larger questions and political stakes I am raising here. Hopefully they will also realize that my George Bush characterization of yours is not inappropriate. because if one doesn’t agree with you you are quite quick to demonize and be insulting in the extreme. I suppose that’s what persuasion means to you.
And it’s also insulting to others here to assume that if they like something that I’ve said they’re merely being seduced by language or ‘airy’ ideas or what have you. This is again the Bush syndrome. Deem anyone ‘unpatriotic’ who doesn’t agree with you. Similarly indulge in barbs like ‘intellectual’ and what not when one cannot or will not respond on the merits (or demerits of the case being made). No one has to agree with me but there is no need for such violent reactions either.
the amusing thing here is that you allow yourself enough ‘knowledge’ to be aware of more films than most people and comment on them with interesting write-ups more often than not (I’m afraid I value interesting thought no matter where it comes from!) but if anyone seems to do more than this or know more about something the ‘intellectual’ bit (always a slur in your vocabulary) instantly comes into play. Couldn’t people look at these obscure (for most) war films you’ve been listing here as the ravings of some ivory tower film intellectual?! Surely watching as much as you have is a rather specialized knowledge? But this is ok. But no one else is allowed access to any other sort of ‘knowledge’ unless it be only to confirm your taste and judgments?! That’s what it boils down to doesn’t it? I have at least been ethical enough to explain myself without such attacks.
Incidentally, and just as an illustration, I will point out Allan’s fine review of Battle of the Somme here:
http://wondersinthedark.wordpress.com/2008/11/11/the-battle-of-the-somme-%C2%BD/#more-914
Leaving aside the fact that Allan too deems the film to be propagandistic I would challenge anyone to read this piece and not come to the conclusion that the author is a person of letters in some sense. Isn’t this the very perfect representation of an ‘intellectual’ piece? all this is ok because Allan understands it. It gets into politics, camerawork, etc. It’s a very complete, thorough piece in many ways. It also deals with a film 99.9% of even regular film viewers have not seen. Let’s be honest. It would make the greatest sense only to film critics drowned in the medium. But hey all of this is ok. It’s not ‘intellectual’. That slur is only reserved for others!
No, Mr Hasan, my piece is not intellectual, and you cloud the point. You have not once apologised for calling World War I & II sappy. You’ve again tried to put a context to it, but it has not in any way made any recompense for such a crass statement.
All you have done is continually bombarded your own post (way to go with the ego boosting 18 comments out of 40 on your own piece!) with justifications of ideologies that belong in the clouds.
I have never written any piece I would consider intellectual. The very term implies real thought, and analysis. I write off the top of my head with no such aforethought.
And no matter what you say, analysis of WWI, II or the ACW has no real bearing on a piece about the Greco-Persian conflicts of the 4th C.BC. Just as, if I was writing a piece about, say, Spartacus, I would not bring it into line with military theories about the Gulf War. That’s irrelevant. Now this is really it, I’m just feeding your ego still further.
I have stayed out of this, not out of lack of interest, but because I want PEACE. Still I will reserve judgement and not say anything that might inflame anything. While Allan is the site’s main contributor, and Kaleem is another outstanding writer of it, I need not cause any situation of no return.
Let’s just say things have aired out.
These are two very very good friends and I want it to stay that way.
I can’t say anything further or I’ll be accused of taking sides. I value these two gentlemen with my life.
“I have never written any piece I would consider intellectual. The very term implies real thought, and analysis.”
Well since this is your own definition why do you use it like a slur?!
“You have not once apologised for calling World War I & II sappy. You’ve again tried to put a context to it, but it has not in any way made any recompense for such a crass statement.”
As people on your side of the pond would say — BOLLOCKS!
But for the record I didn’t call the wars sappy, just the representation of it. No war is ‘sappy’.
“And no matter what you say, analysis of WWI, II or the ACW has no real bearing on a piece about the Greco-Persian conflicts of the 4th C.BC. Just as, if I was writing a piece about, say, Spartacus, I would not bring it into line with military theories about the Gulf War. That’s irrelevant.”
Pity those who continue to read Thucydides for any current relevance! Darn! There go so many academic programs!
“All you have done is continually bombarded your own post (way to go with the ego boosting 18 comments out of 40 on your own piece!) with justifications of ideologies that belong in the clouds.”
Don’t hear anyone else complaining! And this from the person who’s put up 95% of the pieces (and I think I am being moderate in this claim) on the blog so far!
I haven’t contributed very much to the blog. This is a rare piece I put up. I perhaps go into tangential points (which is to say I fail to get this discussion authorized by you, Allan!). People are not interested can ignore it altogether. Not sure what the offense is. Meanwhile you keep lambasting me in every possible way with each response and apparently I am the ‘egotist’ here.
Sam: Though you might regret asking me to participate more actively. LOL!
I should say in fairness that since this is a blog shared by a number of people, or at least there are many who comment here, if many people find a lot of the discussion completely irrelevant or in any case not the kind of thing they’d like to see on this blog I will be happy to desist in the future. Unlike Allan I am not here to set an agenda. I like using films in all sorts of tangential ways as Sam (and Allan to his chagrin) well knows. I myself don’t consider these comments simply tangential but I shall respect the decision of those who do. I am not asking for a majority here but if enough people are not interested I will respect their wishes.
Meanwhile Allan can continue illuminating us on the most important films set in Micronesia.
Kaleem, I assure you that anything you say here is valued profusely. (as is Allan’s) I am thrilled you have come over to the blog in recent weeks armed with analytical eloquence. I am further thrilled you have written several superb pieces, and hopw you will continue to do so.
Of course, Allan’s contributions are essential, although that 95% figure may be a bit too high. LOL! I have written, according to a scan, about 20 to 25% of the total posts. Unfortunately, I am simply unable to do better than that. Allan is sitting on some great stuff, and it is easy enough to get this out there. In this sense, WitD is very very fortunate.
Regardless of the verbal salvos, I am confident all will simmer, and Kaleem, I want you in this picture permanently. You (like Allan) are dear friends and we need both of you (and Tony D’Ambra and sometimes Broadway Bob) to keep this site on a roll.
I have avoided posting to this thread until now, as frankly, I don’t understand most of what Kaleem is saying. But, and sorry Sam, I can remain silent no longer.
Kaleem let me say with respect and in the knowledge that you are sincere and honestly motivated:
1. Your use of the adjective ‘sappy’ was certainly unclear, and Allan’s initial response was totally relevant and I dare say necessary. His anger is also understandable.
2. In response to Allan, instead of immediately clarifying your intent, you merely carried on in the same vein until your well overdue clarification in later posts.
3. What is particularly flabbergasting is your statement that: ” Something called ‘art’ should not be opposed to nebulous terms like ‘life’ and ‘reality’ and what not. Because there is no ‘reality’ without the admixture of art, in a direct sense or through popular channels.” You seem to mediate reality through some intellectual prism, that you feel refines reality, but more likely distorts reality.
4. We don’t need fiction cinema to reflect on war. We have the historical record, archival film, essays, novels, and most importantly, the oral testimony of those that survived and the letters they wrote. I can agree though that popular cinema has helped distort the popular view of war and certain conflicts,
6. But to talk about a hierarchy of conflicts and suffering as you do is abhorrent to me. War is a personal tragedy AND a social tragedy in whatever historical context. We need only look at the recent past to know this: Chechnya,Vietnam, the Cambodian ad Rwandan genocides, Afghanistan, Iraq, and the ‘dirty’ wars in Central and South America. There are also ‘forgotten’ massacres such as the Armenian genocide in the wake of WW1.
Finally, if you want to be understood, you need to state your case clearly in plain language, and not talk down to your readers.
Sam: Thanks very much for your statements.
Tony: I think I clarified everything at length in all those responses. I am a bit puzzled by your charge that I was ‘talking down’ to anyone when I used so many examples at every turn. But let me again be specific:
1)Most war films are more than a little sappy, at least the ones considered ‘classic’ and so on. Before recent decades it’s hard to think of any war movie made in English that is really thought-provoking in any sense even if there might be great entertainment at hand.
2)If war is as serious an issue that the mere discussion of it from a different perspective seems to invite anger ‘with justification’ how then does one ‘justify’ mere entertainment being dished out in the name of those very wars? One can’t have it both ways.
3)The cinema is not fictional if it claims to reprise D-Day! there are certain responsibilities that come with ‘history’. It’s no different than writing a book on the same.
So this kind of cinema is already ‘reflecting’ on war. Or is one totally satisfied with cartoonish Nazi characters and John Wayne-like American liberators?!
4)There is no ‘hierarchy’ of conflicts implied in my discussion. One doesn’t even have to go as far as wars and conflict. I find the most personal of tragedies as calamitous as large scale ones. Because for the person undergoing them any such tragedy is as intense as a large scale historical event. In fact you’ve just made my point for me. It is the ‘narrative’ connected with war (the epic, the stats, and so forth) that makes us think a war is more of a tragic event than an individual family losing their child in an accident. War assuredly contains many such families but for any one family the loss is personal and individual, not collective. yes wars do more than this. Societies are decimated, archives are destroyed but these are still macro arguments. We still think in numbers in such arguments. We think of ‘communities’ and we forget that there are individual tragedies with or without war that cause such devastation in one’s emotional life that these are experienced like the most profound tragedies.
So our endless obsession with both World Wars does exactly the opposite of what we claim to be doing in an ethical sense. We ‘valorize’ and glorify these wars beyond repair. These wars become ‘fun’ and ‘romantic’ and so forth.
But I would be the first to agree that there is no hierarchy. That however wasn’t what I was saying. If the argument is that any war causes mayhem and death and hence it is tragic I wouldn’t disagree but this is a rather impoverished sense of the word. There are distinctions between kinds of conflict. The Jews who got imprisoned and often killed in the worst camps perhaps known to history did not suffer and/or die the way those who did in World War I trenches.
So while one does not like to indulge in a calculus of violence there is yet an economy to be measured. So when I used the word ‘tragic’ I meant it in a little more than everyday sense. This is not to get pedantic about it. I just think that using this word in a cliched way makes it lose all meaning since every other thing can then rightly be judged tragic.
No war is better than any other. But one war can mean something very different from another. And this is the ONLY thing I was arguing about. What do certain wars mean as opposed to others? Incidentally ‘war’ itself becomes a misleading word beyond a point, a stand-in for all kinds of conflicts when the aims, ends and politics might be very different in each case. And the ends and means do matter. Would one prefer dying on the battlefield or at Auschwitz? Does it not matter whether one is killed as an American, a Christian, a man or woman, a Communist or Capitalist or what have you? Death is the same whatever the definition but the meaning of death changes depending on what name is used to kill people.
This is why I called WWI a meaningless war. And there are many historians who’d agree. Not because many people did not suffer personal tragedies but because they suffered these for no great cause or aim. This is in many ways a completely nihilistic war, a theater of the absurd. WWII is different in this regard though never about those moral concerns when the war was being fought. Nations do not fight for ethical reasons 99% of the time, just for political ones. The moralistic reasoning retrospectively justifies conflicts.
5) I think I’ve again between quite clear with the terms ‘art’ and ‘reality’. Look through those examples again. There is the element of the ‘fictional’ in whatever we choose to define as ‘reality’ irrespective of what our definitions might be. Leaving this aside there’s also a pragmatic issue — we can’t even agree on our notions of ‘reality’. Depending on our background, concerns and station in life we all define ‘reality’ very very differently but continue to use this operative term as if everyone agreed with us on the basics!
I of course value your comments here. But I think you’ve misunderstood those things. I am sure I am responsible to some degree but I think you too have not read certain bits more closely. But I strongly resist the idea that I’ve been talking down to anyone.
And while I do take great pains to lay out things as comprehensively as possible I of course cannot guarantee that everything will be perfectly comprehensible to everyone! There’s some work that the reader has to do as well!
What’s going on here? I like Kaleem and I like Allan. And I amy even like Tony. Let’s all kiss and make up.
I don’t have a problem with anyone. Allan blows his top at times. I’m used to it!
By the way anyone interested in the intersection of art, politics and something called ‘reality’ and how these lines get continually blurred should check out Roberto Bolano’s novella, By Night in Chile.
And a great recent movie on similar themes is Tarsem’s the Fall.
I saw The Fall and I really thought it was challenging. What a visual design there! I don’t think the critics really understood it.
And my comments on this film:
Everyone who can should check out Tarsem’s recent the Fall (just released on DVD in the US). The director’s earlier the Cell had a rather distinctive visual style in the service of a kitschy narrative. The film was interested in exploring the boundary line between art and ‘reality’ even as the work seemed to repress its own anxiety that there might not be such a line. In effect there was something ‘terrible’ about such a knowledge in the Cell.
The Fall remedies some of these problems by offering a beautiful homage to cinema. Tarsem in this film might be magic realism’s truest cinematic aesthetician. It is on a visual level one of the most gorgeous films one will ever see. Where the earlier film seemed to have a fabulistic quasi-moral lesson the new film is about fables. In one sense Tarsem does not entirely solve the problem here. There is still (unlike say Pan’s Labyrinth) a somewhat neat division between the world of art/artifice and that of our own lives wherein stories become necessary. But by making the film a commentary on the nature of cinematic illusion and by making this more of a meta-work than the Cell Tarsem perhaps provides a more acceptable compromise. In any case his visuals are quite astonishing and worth the price of the ticket!
Tarsem might one day make a great film. He’s not there yet. But his trajectory has been intriguing so far, specially with this newest film. The Fall got not very good reviews from a critical establishment that pines for the artistically adventurous and yet refuses to recognize such a work when it appears. the same old stale categories of film criticism were invoked to critique this work and ultimately find it inadequate for failing tests of ‘narrative’. I think one must distinguish between ‘narrative’ and ‘narrativity’. A purely visual language can serve the latter just as well provided the director brings it off successfully.
The Fall is to my mind either a successful experiment or a magnificent failure. Either way it deserves to be seen.
And Allan will once again accuse me of carrying on a monologue. But I am quite happy to follow in Shakespeare’s wake!
Peter: agreed completely.
speaking of The Fall, I see Mr. Hasan has posted at the same time my own contribution was recorded. I certainly agree that its gorgeous, and I adhere to that ‘art’ blending with ‘reality’ line. Great review after a review.
Thanks Peter.. our responses did indeed cross..
You can count me in with the love for THE FALL Kaleem, from that stunning opening with Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony coda through that incredible unveiling of some of the most sublime images we’ve seen on a movie screen.
Yeah, it’s flawed, but much of this can be forgiven.
No, monologues are welcome, Kaleem. I’m in the process of drafting an email to the Guinness Book of Records for the longest ever Blog article in terms of comments and essay. Though how in hell’s name we get from Colin Farrell to Beethoven’s 7th is beyond me, talk about ridiculous to the sublime…
Well, Allan, to be truthful (in the best possible sense) comment threads to take in more than one concern, and keep a running discourse are welcomed and dreamed for by any blogsite……..I say keep the discourse running, even if the subject is Mother Goose………..
Sam: good point there..
Allan: This is how blogs work! Things don’t just say completely restricted to the topic. The point is to expand the conversation. I personally think that everything in this thread has been very ‘connected’.
By the way the longest threads I have participated in (not here of course) have run upto 500 comments!
I was going for word count more than comments, but it does make me smile how this one has meandered. Let it roll.
Well those 500 comment threads weren’t short on words either!
hey, the substance in comments is worth far more than how many words comprise them. This thread has been enlightening.
That has been the hope Peter.. speaking for myself it is just a way for me to ‘think’ about certain things.. I welcome any and every exchange.. I don’t see why one has to be so obsessed about sticking exactly to the ‘main topic’ (there would be no blogs with such a rule!).
Speaking of war and its representation I enjoyed Tropic Thunder. Not a great film by any means but had its moments.
I liked Tropic Thunder quite a bit, but I think sam diced it.
Don’t remember Sam’s review on this. Maybe you should put it up here Sam..
Kaleem, I didn’t write a formal review for it, but chose to send out a network e mail with short recaps and grades. Joe got this as he is a network member.