This film slowly restores the whole process of an ordinary person participating in the war through the dictation of the veterans of World War I
At first, the young children were excited, longing, and passionate.
Then to the boring training, familiarity with the equipment and slowly adapting to the military.
Then take the ferry to the back of the battlefield and see the numbness, panic and all kinds of hardships when preparing for battle on the front line.
And the tension in the face of a real hail of bullets, not knowing what will happen tomorrow, and the fear of death to numbness.
The conversion of the whole film from black and white to color began to bring a strong immersive feeling. Before it was too late to admire the greatness of technology, it was pulled by the real "wartime life" to the "World War I reality" - only a piece of clothing, nothing Food (or bad), sleep anywhere, bullets and death anytime, anywhere, bullet craters that bring a huge death threat but save lives at critical moments, and various forms of corpses that will be interspersed in the film at any time, and fleas , maggots, dead hands and feet...
It's a strange feeling of fighting with German soldiers in the war, but maintaining great sympathy and even admiration for the prisoners-because they themselves are the same before coming to the battlefield, they are all ordinary people. Ordinary people fight each other for the ideas of "some people", so the war becomes "meaningless".
Unemployment after returning home after the war, and the incomprehension of those around (no matter how enthusiastic or sympathetic they may want to appear) - because they were "never there", but in the back, even if it was hard (and sometimes not so hard)
Then it is natural to partially understand many of the veteran's ideas - it was shaped a little bit by the cold and hard reality and the death whip.
——
In World War I, the VCR was still a new thing, and everyone who saw the VCR would wave or laugh excitedly with a slightly performative nature. But these vivid faces recorded behind may be one of the "1 million British soldiers who died in World War I".
As an audience, I couldn't help but think about how I would feel if I was in the scene at that time.
I have to say that a good war movie just calmly describes to the audience what the front-line battlefield looks like—as an audience, I naturally feel disgusted with war from my heart.
The final ending song can be the song before and after the soldiers "charged with yellow jokes", which is catchy and has been lingering in my mind.
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