I believe everyone is familiar with the story of "Band of Brothers". It tells the story of the battle of the E Company of the 101st Airborne Force of the United States. This war drama, produced by Spielberg and co-produced by Tom Cruise, has only 10 short episodes, but each episode presents the audience with a very intuitive and real second world. The brutal scene of the war. This is a rare masterpiece of war drama in the past 20 years. Each episode is independently developed around a theme, and is closely linked around the theme of war. It's no exaggeration to say that you can watch it as 10 movies.
The chapter I want to lead you to review today is the ninth episode in this series. The episode revolves around a theme: Why do we fight?
At the beginning of the episode, Company E finally entered Germany. This also means that the troops that liberated Western Europe will become the invaders next. The scene turns, in a ruined German town, innocent Germans are cleaning up their broken homes among the ruins. If you look closely, there are almost no young adults among these people. Several German musicians played a mournful string quartet, as if this group of innocent civilians were expressing their grief. American GIs watched the masterpieces of their own troops from the top, and even had the mood to discuss whether the music was Mozart or Beethoven.
At this time, from the perspective of the director presented to the audience, these Germans were just another group of victims of the war. In order to better deepen the audience's feelings, the director also specially arranged for Captain Nixon to break into the German general's house. Under the indifferent gaze of the general's wife, Captain Nixon, who knew he was wrong, did not dare to look at her and left the room silently. Watching these American soldiers who were frantically grabbing the spoils, the audience couldn't help but wonder: Why are we fighting?
Seeing this, I can't help but secretly worry, the director must not fall into the vicious circle of anti-war topics. Fortunately, the turning point is coming. The U.S. military found an "abandoned" camp on the outskirts of the town, and when they got closer, they realized that it was a Nazi concentration camp. The people who were detained in the concentration camps were all skinny and skinny, like zombies. Bodies are everywhere in the ruins, and there may be more dead than living here. Through the dialogue between the American soldier and the victim, the director told the truth: someone in the town reported the news of the US military stationing to the German army left behind. The German army killed as many people as possible before evacuating, and only calmed down after using the bullet. Leave. Germans in the town were ordered to come here to help bury the bodies. Who's to say none of them were Nazi accomplices, despite all of them claiming to have no knowledge of the camp's existence? A very wonderful detail: the general's wife also appeared among the German people who buried the body. This time, facing Captain Nixon's direct gaze, she bowed her head guiltily.
The narrator describes the brutality of the war: Since then, the Allies have found hundreds of concentration camps like this in Germany. The camera is pulled back to the ruined German town again. At this time, does anyone still think that these Germans were also victims of the war? Who is that sad string quartet singing for now?
A good war movie is to let you feel the cruelty of war at close range, and then make you hate war. Band of Brothers did it. Watching such works will not make you feel the urge to play a hero, but will cherish the peaceful years in front of you even more. This is also the genius of this work: using the description of war to express the theme of anti-war.
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