A film about suffering not battle.
This is a conventional and limited treatment of an extraordinary subject. It is conventional in its use of film and is limited to the suffering caused by war. It is a film that deals with a battle only in a broad and almost incidental sense: Suffering is the exhaustive theme.
One film would have been adequate to see alternately survivors sat in artfully dimmed spaces emotionally and repetitively recounting suffering and footage of people on the move or killed. To make the point and lather it home we get the clichéd Volga vistas and stirring orchestral music, too.
Film should be employed innovatively (or not) to match the subject - be it suffering or the account of a siege and urban warfare. These films deal with the former blandly and little with the latter. If we are not to become inured to suffering then director's please rise to the occasion.
One film would have been adequate to see alternately survivors sat in artfully dimmed spaces emotionally and repetitively recounting suffering and footage of people on the move or killed. To make the point and lather it home we get the clichéd Volga vistas and stirring orchestral music, too.
Film should be employed innovatively (or not) to match the subject - be it suffering or the account of a siege and urban warfare. These films deal with the former blandly and little with the latter. If we are not to become inured to suffering then director's please rise to the occasion.
- mta333
- Mar 14, 2014