My Honor Was Loyalty

My Dad was an officer, Combat Engineers attached to the 3rd Army. Many German soldiers - from privates who had deserted to Officers with polished boots driving under a white flag in a Mercedes Staff Car - surrendered to them as they worked on bridges on the Rhine. One day he had his Jeep driver pull over in front of a farmhouse. My Dad handed his driver his Thompson and went into the building hoping to find goodies in the kitchen. He had drawn his 1911 .45 and walked in to startle a German soldier also foraging for some food. Well the German raised his Mauser and my Dad fired a single shot from his .45, and this little face to face to battle was over. It was the only shot he fired in the war - engineers didn't always engage the enemy like that. Immediately my Dad knew that this very young kid was a solo deserter looking to find the Americans and surrender. More and more Germans were showing up every day eager to surrender. The Germans would have shot him if they found him. My Dad was haunted for the rest of his life. He had wished that this German kid got his wish and got to go home. This film reminds me of that vivid reality.

While making a movie on a shoestring is a challenge, bad decisions have been made to make this movie bad. For instance, we are served poorly executed battles that are obviously located in the same area that has to represent Russia in 1943 and Normandy in 1944. These battles just look downright fake. Coupled with this is the poor acting, marred by dubbing, the poorly cinematography(shaky handy cams!) the endless boring battles scenes and finally the borrowing from the thin red line.(long intro, voice overs, chaotic battle scenes, a lot of pondering and thinking).

The movie is presented as the story of a regular guy serving in the SS. It is literally announced at the start of the movie. However, the movie plays this fiddle a bit too much. For example: at one moment the subject is raised why the men joined the SS and it is presented as if they just wanted to do their duty. But the SS was not just some regular army unit. The SS were selected men, all volunteers, who adhered to a certain ideology and are noted for a long list of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Notably, the unit in this movie, the 1st SS, was notorious for this.

While the subject could have been interesting, the movie does not make much use of it. Where moral ambiguity would have been interesting, this is downplayed and only brought up at the end of the movie and the cloaked in a kind of apologetic by showing that the allies were bad as well. It would have been a much better movie if it had shown the SS as they were, brave perhaps, but brutish as well, and so perhaps explain how they could do the things they did. Now we just get to see what we have already seen before. A soldier getting tired of war and disillusioned. That we have seen before and seen done a lot better.

I was not expecting much. However, I was surprised that it was a pretty good film, considering the paucity of its budget. Generally the acting was good, particularity the lead, Leone Frisa. The low budget aspects (Russian becomes Normandy as the same location is used for both) are distracting but the story is compelling. It is a bit slow but stick with it and you may be surprised.

You could easily call that. If I take my knowledge about history from that movie I would think the only ones who commit war crimes was Russians and mostly - Americans. Movie completely skipped fact that 1st SS division has certain history of killing unarmed captured soldiers - at one time 4000 Russian prisoners was killed by them on place, on other occasion 80 British prisoners ( of course not in the movie). Every SS unit carried out multiple executions on civilians, when You watch this German propaganda view how SS mans from 1st Adolf Hitler division was brave and kind , just remember 6 millions of people was killed in just six year in Poland , mostly by SS. Not counting Russian casulties. Its worth watching only when You remember what SS did , and that this is totally one sided try of picturing all sides as equal. While 17 millions of Germans supported Hitler's NSDAP, 9 millions had NSDAP membership.And that their war crimes and mass murders in Death Camps - where also brave SS- mans served - was second to nothing in history of that planet.

In recent times while most movies include various "points" to be made, nearly all of them are produced to "entertain" a target audience and make money. Reviews are meant to give potential viewers some hints on what to expect.

Very few films are instead produced with the prime objective of stating a position: being it an artistic or ethical-socio-political POV. Our opinion that - demos and educational content aside - a movie isn't the best medium for such "statements" is generally ignored and, as such, irrelevant: symbolic engagement is still more effective than reasoning and thus a well designed movie is more persuasive than a logic text. Regarding these films - as far as we are concerned - reviews are someway as interesting as watching the film itself because serious reviews virtually become part of a discussion. And some discussions easily heat-up...

Here we have such a film; one - unfortunately - where the author naively uses complex concepts like truth, reality, history, nature (just to name a few) and aims at being a-political while dealing with the most influential event of our world: 2nd world war.

The result? Talking about Malick's "The thin red line" isn't casual: the parallel is obvious, deliberate and merciless. While Malick let soldiers share with few words their relationship with life, love, war, etc... here we have a lot of preachy-poetic voice-overs from the protagonist (a supposedly simple-minded soldier) and even an out-of-context female lecturing us with "godly wisdom". The outcome is that while in Malick's film I could feel moved by the soldiers' perspectives and engaged by their aesthetic-philosophic value, here I feel like someone is trying to sell me a not-so-subtle brainwashing into Pepe's simplistic world-view.

Let's not even dig about the technical proficiency: sub par is the first word coming to our mind.

In the end the bravery required to commit into a project like this (which would like to go way further than any WW2 tale of good VS evil) should be paired with a deeper understanding of what you're doing. Mr Pepe, if you want to change people's perspective or at least enlarge it, being a preachy commercial marketer doesn't work anymore. Get a serious culture (Malick studied his whole life, you have likely just taken a semester of contemporary history) and write a serious book. Otherwise, humbly, forget about "Art" and Malick and just seek to entertain.