Tag Archives: turns out war sucks actually

Miranda Colbert’s review of “1917”

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Word Count: 688

In times where modern technology has enhanced movies to unbelievable heights, it is comforting to see the simplicity of a story told in one continuous shot. Even though this isn’t a new idea, (the first one-shot film being in 1948) it is sort of a refreshing change of pace. Taking on this challenge in his movie, “1917” Director Sam Mendes attempts to capture the horrors of World War One. Partially inspired by his grandfather’s war stories, he tells the tale of two young soldiers, Lance Corporal Schofield (George McKay) and Lance Corporal Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman) who are ordered to head through “no mans land” to a nearby company to call off an attack. As the two get closer to the front lines, the horrors of war become apparent. 

Though the technical skill of Mendes cannot be denied, it’s hard to focus on anything other than that. Because the film was more of an extended shot it prevents anything else from stealing away the focus. The point of having multiple angles in the movie is to give a different perspective on a certain subject. It is also a refreshing change of pace so the viewer is constantly stimulated. Taking away from the angles makes the viewer hyper focused on other elements. For me, I was focused on the story itself, which was lackluster in my opinion. I felt as though Mendes focused on the technical aspect so much that the plot ended up being predictable and simplistic. It got rid of the interesting characters, or a reason for them to continue on other than the mission they were handed in the beginning of the film. Film reviewer, Peter Sobczynski, explained it as “watching someone else play a video game for a solid two hours.” I agree with his point, it felt as if the person playing the video just went through the main mission without doing any of the interesting side quests. They got to the point of the game, but did not let the viewer see why the game was amazing. 

I feel as though the actors were properly chosen. They were average when it came to looks, which emphasized the point that anyone at that time could have been a soldier. They’re acting was decent (though I guess you could blame that on an average script). There wasn’t much emotion involved, but when there was it was accurately displayed.*  McKay also accurately expressed the emotions of exhaustion as well as desperation toward the end of his mission. His constant determination throughout the film was nothing to be laughed at as well. 

The film does a great job with providing enough history for the viewers to understand, without boring them to death. I know for me personally, it is hard to pay attention to long speeches filled with information. Mendes relays information through short dialogue and context clues that help the viewer get enough to have an understanding without being an expert. Since the movie isn’t about World War I specifically (though that is when it was set), but rather how awful war is, it is unnecessary for the viewer to know every detail.Because it also takes place in the middle of the war itself, it would have been impossible to explain how the war went since the character wouldn’t know that information. Which Mendes understands and accounts for. 

Overall, I think it was a good movie. Would I say I’d watch it again or buy it? Not really. The movie was definitely well filmed and Mendes is obviously talented, but I don’t think he’s a writer. There were many issues in the film but not enough for it to be considered horrible. 

SPOILERS FROM THIS POINT ONWARDS!!! 

*For example Lieutenant Joseph Blake’s (Richard Madden) reaction to the death of his brother was accurate. It wasn’t dramatic but more on the numb side. It felt as though he had dealt with death and was not trying to let it get to him. The scene was strong as well as realistic in my opinion. 

https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/1917-movie-review-2019

Katia’s review of The Burying Party

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The one-hour run of The Burying Party (2018) contains the ghosts of several films. A gritty war film depicting the real life poet Wilfred Owen’s first exposures to the trenches; a film that dives deep into the literary world he occupies, giving greater detail and focus to its cast and their interpersonal relationships. A deep dive into the development of Owen’s writing voice; a condemnation of war-hungry empire. Potentially, even, two or more hours that try tries to combine some or all of these features. 

The Burying Party itself is is not any of these films, but I think it accomplishes an unusual sense of completeness in its fragmented brevity. As it moves across time and space, through disparate visual and auditory worlds, it interweaves snapshots of Owen’s life at the front and on leave. In other words, the film can roughly be split into his witnessing first-hand “the pity of war,” and the interpersonal, artistic journey that enabled him to capture it, in such a way that we’re reading and remembering him now, over a hundred years later. 

The film’s contrasting settings are conveyed with care and detail. We open on Owen (Matthew Staite) at war, surrounded with what I’ve come to think of universally as gray-green “World War One color grading,” and accompanied by the haunting, discordant sounds of a piercing yet irresolute soundtrack, which punctuated by the sounds of the war itself. When the next scene finds him back home, in his mother’s house, seeing him clean and indoors is as jarring to the viewer as it clearly feels to the character. 

As he and the rest of the cast navigate indoor spaces, as well as the breathtaking English pastoral scenes that our friend-from-two-weeks-ago Sigfried Sassoon (Sid Phoenix) critiques Owen for lauding in his early poetry, the contradictions at play within these poets’ emotional lives surface with these alterations in visual worlds. These are mirrored by the soundtrack, which alternates between the harshly modern instrumentals of the war scenes, the stately pianos and violins of indoor social spaces, the birdsong and seaside of the English outdoors, and – at certain times, like the first meeting between Owen and Sassoon – the perfect silence that backgrounds dialogue. 

Owen and Sassoon’s dynamic fruitfully evades explicit melodrama or overstatement but nonetheless read to me as the heart of the film. While I’m unfamiliar with all but the most famous of Owen’s works, and only know the basic outline of his biography, the interplay between the two (and at times others in their circles) surrounding war poetry and its mission felt memorable and specific in a way that literary-biography type movies sometimes fail to achieve. I don’t know how it would play to experts, or to people with less knowledge of early twentieth century English literary circles than I, but to me the exposition surrounding the cast’s relationships and life positions felt effective and economical.

Outside of art, politics, and war, in the world of feeling or affection, more is unsaid between Owen and Sassoon than said for the majority of the movie. The intensity of this oft-mythologized literary mentorship was effectively carried by Staite and Phoenix, both in the realm of independent acting choices and the quietly intense chemistry between the two. 

As an admirer and writer of creative nonfiction, watching The Burying Party acts in close parallel to the experience of reading a fragmented lyric essay. We do not get the full story, but the parts we get are vivid and well-chosen enough to form a cohesive whole nonetheless. We might yearn, in fact (or at least I did), for hours of watching Owen and Sassoon discuss poetic form, for Owen, Sassoon, and Graves to get to sing the entirety of The Leaving of Liverpool without breaking off, for Owen to have a full conversation with his mother. But each moment we get to see is beautifully crafted; and when it comes to Wilfred Owen himself, time’s limited run is arguably the entire point.

“I Have Thoughts”

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This is what I briefly said to Dr. Scanlon yesterday. And, even after listening to today’s discussion, those thoughts remain relatively the same.

I’m having a hard time liking any one character, even smaller ones like the different nurses around the hospital where Frederick is staying. There seems to always be something that they say or do that bothers me, or makes me stop and think “huh, that’s kind of weird.” Granted, each character has their moments where I’ll like them for what they said, or maybe something they did, but it never lasts.

I love that, though. I’d rather read a book that frustrates me to no end, that makes me feel at least something, rather than read a book where I feel nothing at all and I am just chugging my way through it. Don’t let my above thoughts fool you: I actually really like this book. I like not knowing who I side with in conversation; I like constantly flip-flopping back and forth on character support. It keeps my reading experience interesting.

I think it’s actually a great tie-in to the other stories we’ve read, and All Quiet in particular. War forces a person to play on a line of morality that someone like me really hasn’t had to even think about. I don’t believe that anything in life is completely black and white, but especially in a war, the different shades of grey are endless. You become who you have to, and do what you feel you have to in order to get by. This applies to Frederick and Catherine as well. While I think there are some genuine emotions toward each other, as someone mentioned, it’s more like the idea of playing house with someone than anything else. They’re playing a part that they need to in order to stay some semblance of sane.

I don’t dislike Catherine for her as a character, necessarily, but more for the way Hemmingway wrote her, if that makes sense. I’m more upset with the author than I am the character.

These narratives we’ve read all play with morality in interesting ways, and I’m curious to see what happens with the rest of the narrative.

Article I mentioned in class (sort of)

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I have seen another piece about finding the body of a WWI Italian soldier in the Alps and will keep looking. But in the meantime, here is the story from the Post that I crossed it with, in which they find a preserved bunker from the war that is Austro-Hungarian, so I was a bit off:

https://wapo.st/3gPvrLe

Daniella Colón’s Reading Questions for February 10th, 2022

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1) Many of Sassoon’s poems revolve around the experience of death in ways that are figurative and literal. From the sullen and straightforward nature of How to Die, to the intensifying nature of Counter-Attack, Sassoon’s attempts to give multiple portrayals of death through several perspectives in these collective poems. Compared to the likes of All Quiet on the Western Front and Not So Quiet, how are these themes portrayed differently through the use of poetry compared to the format of a novel? Is there a similar impact to be found?
2) The generals of Sassoon’s works are written to be far more flawed compared to the works of Smith and Remarque; works such as Base-Details and The General give distinct characterization, whether it be through a first-person perspective, or by the addition of dialogue to these pieces to give further contextualization to these individuals. Do these tactics enhance the effectiveness of Sassoon’s portrayal? How do they affect the tone of Sassoon’s works, along with his portrayal of war?
3) The Poet As Hero is written to be far more reflective and self-aware compared to his other works. Although it can be inferred as a message directed towards the reader, Sassoon’s words gain far more weight with the implication of his first-hand experiences of fighting for Britain in World War 1. He directly states how he once “sought the grail,” directly referencing his involvement in the war, and being told that his youth “rose immortal semblances of a song.” Yet, in the final stanza, he states that despite how his views have changed, Sassoon says that “there is absolution in my songs.” How does this collection of his poems back up this statement? How do the themes presented represent the changes discussed in The Poet As Hero?

Katia’s Reading Questions for February 10th

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  1. “Repression of War Experience” is one of now several portrayals we’ve seen of a narrator struggling with mental health in relation to the Great War, but it’s the first we’ve seen in metered poetry, as opposed to Smith and Aldington’s prose. How does the existence of meter as a force that structures the poem interact with the narration of the post-war mind, which is arguably a fundamentally unstructured thing? How might the change in form from prose to poetry impact a reader’s experience of this subject? 
  2. “The Redeemer” and “Christ and the Soldier” both portray men who appear to be Jesus Christ in contact with the war, but the two portrayals are very distinct. Notably, the symbology of the crown of thorns is explicitly divergent between the two. What kinds of differing or parallel images do the two poems paint regarding Christ in relation to soldiers and the Great War? How might this tie into Sassoon’s more overarching views on England, or on religion? 
  3. Sassoon varies the tone of his poetry and the voices imbedded into it a great deal; the dialogue-centered, sardonic “They” and “The General” exist alongside dense, highly-detailed, visually-oriented narration, such as the voice that narrates “Counter-Attack” and “A Night Attack.” What are the differing purposes or effects of these styles, or other poetic styles Sassoon assumes? Is there a particular advantage (or disadvantage) that one of these approaches might hold in writing about the war for a particular audience?

Nathalie’s Reading Questions for February 1st

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Hi everyone!

  1. In Chapter Four, Nellie receives a letter from her sister containing her own experiences supporting the war. How do her and her sister’s experience differ? Do you think Trix is witholding the reality of her situation as Smith is or do you think she is sharing her own (seemingly better) reality with her sister?
    Add on, what do you make of what Trix heard about Smith’s experience supporting the war through rumors amongst her fellow drivers? And to what effect do these rumors take in Chapter Six on the convoy and eventually on the Bug’s mental and physical health?
  2. Later in Chapter Four, Smith angrily demands that her mother and Mrs. Evans-Mawnington follow her and see what occurs straight at the battle field. How does this section relate to our discussion of how the war is perceived at the illusionment of home vs. the brutality of war? And do you think Smith commands to “look” and “see” sharing the ugliness of war and the effects of it on the children sent to the front with these women is cruel or necessary to their understanding? Would their understanding even attribute to any change? Is this passage influential to us today? (pp. 90-96)
  3. In Chapter Five, the girls throw a going away party for the B.F. complete with speeches. How do you think of the well wishes that The Bug and Tosh send her? Keeping in mind what we talked about in class today in regard to what the B.F. and Etta Potato may be representing to us, what do you make of the tone that these well wishes are said in? (pp. 106-108)

Bonus Round! Featuring random questions I am curious to hear thoughts on.

  • On pg 79, Aunt Helen writes a letter to Smith notifying her that she has made a will in her favor. Is this will for Nellie? If so, with what audacity??
  • Am I crazy to read this book as a modernist novel? There is a real “stream of consciousness” narrative at play here and I am wondering if I am just overthinking it.

I look forward to hearing what you guys thought on Tuesday. Good night!

NOT SO QUIET Miscellany

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Nellie notes that her family is sick of receiving her “crossed-out field postcards” (30). This is an example of such a card, many thousands of which were sent during the war:

image of field postcard

Bovril: “thick and salty meat paste extract” (wikipedia)

Bovril ad

British ambulance and drivers:

Some songs about the Great War

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Something I thought would be good to share are some songs from/about the Frist World War that have affected me in one way or another.

The first song is “Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye,” a song about an Irish veteran returning home from the home, missing both physical and spiritual parts of himself as he’s completely run down by the war. It ends on the theoreitcally optimistic note that, although he’s missing an arm, a leg, his innocence, and will likely be begging for food for the rest of his life; he still is alive, so that’s something.

The second song is a reading of “In Flanders Fields,” probably the most famous poem of the War. The poem itself probably needs no introduction, but here is a link to it regardless.

The third song is “Wo alle Straßen enden,” a song disputedly attributed in part to a German soldier in WWI, although I feel like it hits the feeling of utter hopelessness quite well. A very fitting song for All Quiet on the Western Front, as it describes this hopelessness from a German perspective with the knowledge of the impending losing of the war in mind.

The fourth song is “Green Fields of France,” a Scottish folksong written in the 1970’s about the narrator considering the grave of a soldier who died in 1916, and wondering if the soldier left anyone behind when he died or if he was properly honored. The narrator then starts wondering if the war was fought for anything at all.

The fifth and final song I wanted to share in this post is “And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda,” and it’s one of my favorite songs about the war and a song that almost always make me cry. It’s a play on the classic ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) song Waltzing Matilda, a song played often in the ANZAC army bands and a marching song of the era. And the Band Played is hardly about the original subject matter of Waltzing Matilda, as And the Band Played focuses on the experience of an Australian Conscript sent to fight in the meatgrinder of a campaign known as Gallipoli. Eventually, this conscript return homes short a leg, with nobody to go home to and considers how pointless the whole war was. Waltzing Matilda is used to help the theme of being lied to by those in power to die in this war. To make it short, it’s a very good song.

I hope you all enjoy (or maybe that’s not the right word) these songs and get something out of them. I’d love to know y’alls thoughts on them!