They live on the same land and believe in the same God... The
Civil War broke out in the United States in the mid-nineteenth century. Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, became the leader of the North during the Civil War. The Northern Army, headed by Lincoln, fought a very cruel battle with the Southern Army.
One day, just after a battle, Lincoln met a fanatical Northern Army supporter. "In this battle, they killed 2,700 people, and we only sacrificed 800 people. This is a victory for us! Great!" The lady cheered excitedly.
Lincoln was shocked by her comments, and said solemnly: "3,500 siblings died for this. Can such a battle be called a complete victory?"
"Oh, Mr. President, don't you say that." Madam He defended, "In fact, we only lost 800 people, didn't we?"
Lincoln lowered his head, tears streaming into his eyes. He replied in a short and powerful voice: "Madam, it seems that I can only say that this world is far larger than your spiritual world."
Lincoln's words seem to be not limited to the Americans. This lady who supports the Northern Army is "Annihilated" 3,500 Southerners and was ecstatic, but did not feel sad for the 800 "sacrificed" "comrades" in her eyes. In her view, the number of deaths of these soldiers is merely a measure of the pros and cons of both parties. .
Lincoln is hypocritical. How many so-called "brilliant and powerful" politicians did not reach the summit of power with blood on their hands.
However, in the eyes of Americans, Lincoln has always been the most outstanding president, and he is more respected than Roosevelt and "I Love You". Lincoln is indeed qualified to be respected by people, because it is naive and stupid to measure a politician by the "morality" of everyday people. If "morality" can determine everything, then all the people in the world are "very effective". "The leaders should all apologize.
There are so many politicians, but not many can be called "politicians". Lincoln is a politician. He knows how to do what is best for the United States and his authority. The value of equality between North and South advocated by Lincoln is undoubtedly correct for the development of the United States, even though he ironically died under the bullet of radicals.
The United States has a history of hundreds of years since its birth. Except for the Independence War and the Civil War, there have been basically no other wars in the country.
If the Americans in the War of Independence can be proud of their nature as "fighting foreigners," then the Civil War left the Americans with only trauma.
The death of more than 1 million Americans means that at least more than 2 million people will shed tears for them. Of these more than 1 million people, who is not born to their parents? Besides, they will have brothers and sisters, children and friends.
The theme reflected in the Civil War movies made by the Americans is not that the Northern Army’s “justice must win” or the Southern Army’s “unpaid ambitions”. Instead, it tends to bypass the political right and wrong and emphasize the “chiromance”. Therefore, you can often see the tragedy of "cannibalism" in American civil war films. The film arranges two protagonists with completely different positions, playing for mutually hostile political forces, fighting each other, no one is the real winner, and finally staying. Yes, there is only a sea of blood, and the tears of relatives and friends.
Northerners would cry bitterly while holding the bodies of their companions, Southerners would also feel sad about the death of their comrades; Northerners would be afraid of the bullets that would fly, and Southerners would shrink under the shelter; Northerners would fight heroically and calmly. Southerners also regard death as home; Northerners pursue their ideals of freedom, and Southerners also swear to defend their homes; Northerners will looting houses, Southerners will also enslaves blacks; Northerners will shout "Fight, brothers!", Southerners will also shout like this …
In American movies, southerners’ values are still the same as in the past, which is difficult to identify with, but you can clearly feel that they are also living people. The moment the bullet hits the southern soldiers’ chests, they are "dead" rather than "destroyed"...
The description of these movies has long gone beyond the distinction between the so-called "orthodox" and "rebellion", and has risen to The stage of human characterization.
A person is first a person, then an American, and then a northerner, a southerner, and a black American.
In recent years, the United States has shot many films reflecting the Civil War, many of which are excellent. In addition to the recognized classics such as "Glorious Battle" and "Cold Mountain", there are also two films that are also quite appreciable: Battle of Gunzburg" and "Gods and Generals".
Hollywood is now always filming "epic masterpieces", but it seems that when I look at it, I find that calling 10,000 people to fight in the square is called "epic", and getting on a plane and flying around in the air is called "big scene." Walking in a certain area and kissing is called "tragedy of love." When the enemy's bullets are flying like a swarm of bees, the protagonist has time to chat. It is called "Humanity Glory" when the boss has the advantage. Cool wasting time and finally being killed by the protagonist is called "spiritual"...
So now, no matter whether it is made in Hollywood or made in China, whenever I hear "epic masterpiece", I will inevitably feel the thorn of chicken fur and immediately avoid it. Retreat three thousand homes.
However, the appearance of "Battle of Gettysburg" and "Gods and Generals" really made me feel the charm of a truly epic work.
These two films are actually adapted from the "American Civil War Trilogy", and the last remaining work is "The Ultimate Measure", which is currently still being filmed and is expected to be released in 2010.
"Anyone's evaluation of a group of people is one-sided, you can only evaluate one person at a time." The
above sentence, from "Gettysburg", refers to the opinion of blacks, but it also applies to northerners and Americans. Southerners.
History books always like to simply divide the people in this war into southern or northern factions, but in fact, southerners have relatives in the north, and northerners also have relatives in the south. This is revealed in Gettysburg. In the Civil War, there were tragedies in which relatives and friends fought each other because they served in different armies.
Also, in history, not all southerners supported slavery. On the contrary, there were also many prominent people in the north who owned manors and raised a lot of slaves. For example, "a certain" northern general was one of them.
While our Chinese bricksmen are "distinguishing love and hatred" to evaluate the American Civil War, the Americans themselves are already seriously thinking about the gains and losses of this civil war. In the eyes of Americans, there are also many people in the South. They wanted to defend their homeland from the bottom of their hearts. They just didn't want to accept the rule of the Northern Army.
A simple evaluation of the Civil War and an overview to measure everyone on both sides of the North and South is just a generalization in itself. In the face of disasters, Blizzard will never treat you preferentially because you believe in communism, and bullets will not give you the impeccable King Kong just because you worship capitalism.
There is a plot in "Gods and Generals" that impressed me. When the fighting ceased, a southern soldier was bored and talked to the northern soldier on the opposite side. When they were far away, the two joked with each other. They mock each other's values, but when they are close to each other, they look at each other silently. Finally, the two gave each other something, and then returned to their camp without a sound.
Because I’m too far away and don’t understand the enemy, I feel that the “enemy is not a person” but an object that should be annihilated. Different living people.
High respect for life is the common feature of these films. Also, the characters in the film are very humane. The high degree of restoration of humanity in these two films is no less than "Destruction of the Empire" and "Attack from the Sea".
Humanization does not mean beautification. The so-called beautification refers to advocating, defending, reversing the case, and bragging about the rationality of the slavery system in the South. Humanization is to restore the southerners to ordinary people and show their emotions and desires, rather than one-sidedly shaping them into three-headed six-armed monsters.
Everyone has their own parents, and their values have a process of formation-this is a nonsense, but a lot of nonsense is the truth. Maybe southerners are demons, but they can blindly condemn demons without thinking about the process of demons' formation. That is irresponsible to history.
After the first battle of "Gods and Generals" was over, when the speaker of the Northern Army read out "By comparison, you have fewer sacrifices", no Northern soldier was excited, and no one thought it was. Fortunately, they clearly and sadly felt that those friends who had been with them for many years disappeared in the blink of an eye in the gunfire. They closed their eyes forever and would never talk to them again. Live with them again. They are a group of lives and living people, but in the eyes of politicians and historians, they are just numbers. When the rate of decrease of this number is lower than that of the enemy, it is victory. They should be touted. When it is higher than the enemy, then Just being "sighed with emotion", and then shouting a few beautiful slogans, naturally someone will inherit their "immortal legacy."
In addition to thinking about life, the two films also extend this reflection on human nature to the political realm and the cruelty of war.
First of all, while many Civil War movies criticized slavery in the South, they did not shy away from the real atrocities of the Northern Army to looting homes, and the situation of northern laborers is probably not much better than that of southern slaves. But in general, the northern army is still more qualified to claim to represent "justice."
However, black and white are not always so clear. People are always in a gray area, but the northern army and civilians are more white, and the southern army and civilians are more biased. black.
If the government is the "parent", then the citizens are the "children". Therefore, the "parents" can win the support of the "children" as long as they use the banner of "for the sake of their children"-regardless of the "support", yes Direct or indirect, voluntary or forced.
There is a plot in "Gettysburg" in which a northern officer tells soldiers the purpose of the war and what is the meaning of liberating slaves. Generally speaking, after this plot, the audience is greatly infected, and they waved their hands to join the war, but the director But he didn't do that. He just asked the officer to walk away silently after speaking, leaving a group of thinking listeners.
Those audience members were the northern soldiers of Maine. As a netizen commented: "They think that the military agreement with Maine has expired and they should go home and withdraw from the war. They simply do not care about the noble mission of the liberators. . Finally returned to the battlefield out of the colonel’s plea, and proved in the battle that they are not cowards. And the words of the captured soldiers of the Southern Army also showed that the war is not as simple as the propaganda, how can anyone not do it for their own homeland? War?-Even if he is wearing the uniform of the Southern Army. Here, he is not only a rebel in a simple sense, but a soldier defending his homeland."
Perhaps in the eyes of some literati, the Northern Army "has achieved A great victory", but in the eyes of the American people, the Northern Army lost countless comrades and relatives in this ruthless war, shed countless blood and tears, and left parents and children behind. After a heavy price, all you get is to write the word "victory" in the history books and the praises of boring scholars. In addition, there is nothing else, but in fact the trauma caused by war is innumerable. The Southern Army The same is true, especially for ordinary people and blacks.
When Hideki Tojo sat comfortably at the table and wrote a few crappy poems, and then yelled "Wuyun grows into the future", when Xiao Fudie used a lot of beautiful patriotic slogans to encourage others to do it for him At the time of the death, when Wei Wei and Zhang Hongzhi and others were writing a gorgeous flattering masterpiece, did they experience the cruelty of the front lines of war? Have they ever felt the despair that life was about to die at the moment the bullet came? Do they feel the longing for their hometown and relatives from the soldiers who have been camping out for a long time?
In any war, setting aside those high-sounding reasons, the rest is nothing more than "efficient killing".
I didn’t think that the Southern Army represents justice again because of watching these two films. As stated in "Gods and Generals", it is understandable for Southerners to pursue freedom, but if you take this freedom, It is wrong to build on the suffering of black people. However, these two films prompted me to look at these histories more calmly.
These are just two objective films, two near-great films-I rarely use the empty words "great".
Looking forward to the last part of the "Civil War Trilogy".
I am not a Hami gang or an American hater, but I still can't talk about how good the United States is. The reason is not the Korean War or the Vietnam War. These are far away from me. I can only read it from books. At this point, the views in the books are often very one-sided. For me who pursues "it is worse than no books", these books are not conducive to my understanding of the United States.
What really made me disgusted with the United States came from the bombing of our embassy by the US military in 1999. At that time, there was an outbreak of anti-American demonstrations in my hometown. I remember that at that time, my anti-American sentiment reached its limit.
However, I have not been in contact with American things, especially film and television works. From the cartoon "Cat and Mouse" I watched when I was a child, to the award-winning "American blockbuster", I can't count how many I have watched. , If the American values have no influence on me at all, that is pure nonsense.
Therefore, I can say that I always look at the United States at a distance, avoiding too much flattering or blind hatred of it.
As for the posture of "fathers and mothers are not as good as Americans" put on by some mold fans at the War History Salon, it only makes me feel sick.
In any case, reflection is meaningful. Long live reflection, thank Lao Mei for making these good films: "Gettysburg", "Gods and Generals", "Thin Red Line", "Nuremberg Trial (Special Edition) ", "Apocalypse Now", "Field Platoon", "Full Metal Shell"...
Attached:
Civil War Trilogy 1: "Gods and Generals"
Civil War Trilogy 2: "Gettysburg" (The Battle of Gettysburg)"
(Civil War Trilogy 3 "Ultimate Measure" is being filmed)
"Glorious Battle Glory"
"Gone with the Wind (Gone with the Wind)"
"Cold Mountain"
"Riding with the Devil"
"North and South Troubles"
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