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Film & Television The roaring of lions, the howling
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How does one go about telling a war story? ... Is film better suited to the task than other forms? ... Aside from raw documentary footage, movies, like books, need a story to tell. And when it comes to war, stories there are. ... There are stories of courage and fear, of heroism and terror ... of dumb luck and absurd misfortune. There are even stories of comic hilarity. ... There are stories, too, of love. For the longest time, it seemed Hollywood needed to bring the usual love interest of other genres to the war film, as well. There are more reasons for this than might be imagined -- from the commercial interest that inserts such love stories into the main story to widen audience appeal, to the perfectly understandable need to show that the main character in question has something to lose, and that his loss would mean something to another. But in the war film, these love stories are not between men and women only, who may be separated by great distance, but among the men themselves {I don't know of any war films in which women figure predominantly}, men whose lives in war are thrust closer together through circumstance and the kind of difficulties which peace doesn't usually provide. ... Those who have been in war know what I mean here. ...
Beyond the stresses and difficulties in common, there is also an experience of mutuality and absolute dependence upon one another that develops in war, and is, in fact, one of its essential features. And it gives rise to sometimes profound feeling. We can call it camaraderie, though that is a pale word for it. But there are few who are fortunate enough to return home who will ever experience its like again. And for some of those who did not return, and who did not simply lose life, but gave it for the sake of others, the depth and the meaning of such love was clear. ... Potentially at least, this can be the stuff of great war films. In a somewhat similar fashion, there are stories of the individual's experience of returning from war, only to find that that life feels vacant or purposeless, or simply dulled. Here, often, the question of feeling is not so much a question of depth as it is a question of intensity. In such cases, it is not uncommon to find the veteran yearning to return to the war, and in some other cases still, to find him do just that. Of course, there is also the possibility that the intensity will be turned inward or out in strong fashion, with self-destruction or violence as a result. .... In any case, film here, when done well, becomes a psychological study that matches in its own right the intensity of the vet in question.
In war, too, of course, there are also tragedies. Not the sad and painful stories of loss, mind you, but actual tragedies -- stories in which it seems that the peculiar character or yearnings of the individual seemingly conspire with 'the time' until, together, they result in his undoing. That undoing can mean a loss of rank or standing, of faith or belief, of sanity ... or, of course, a loss of life. When one is confronted with stories like these, there's almost always a strangely mingled sense -- one that signals the difference between true tragedy and pathetic loss. It is a sense that the loss was both avoidable and inevitable. ... This is potentially the stuff of films that rival the best of dramatic theater, although the theater may remain the better medium for such explorations. By its very nature, war, too, is often the field for stories of a loss of innocence. Because in large part war takes youth out of a life relatively sheltered by comfort and safety, such loss of innocence can often mean a loss of naïveté. The experience of war -- whether in its cumulative effect or in the effect of a single, piercing moment -- demonstrates that life isn't all bright and shining, nor is it terribly safe. More difficult, however, is the loss of moral innocence.
Here, the precipitating cause is almost always connected with a single instance -- an initial trespass upon conscience. Because war demands that one act in ways that are so contrary to what is normally considered good or right, it is almost inevitable that the experience of war will bring with it some kind of moral confrontation. And how the individual faces such confrontation, and what he does or refuses to do in the face of it, has been the theme of some of the more important war films of modern times. But whatever the cause of such loss, and irrespective of whether it is a loss of naïveté or a loss of moral innocence, the effect is almost always the same. Such experiences become insistent. They want and need to find their place in a single, all-inclusive sense of one's self and the world. But therein may lie the crux of the matter. It is no accident of language, for example, that G.I.'s often have a term for 'home' that emphasizes the fact that 'home' seems to exist in a different world than the one in which the war takes place. Of course, as one tries to wrestle with this dimension of the experience of war ... to explain it to oneself, or, if it becomes more public knowledge, tries to explain it to others ... it becomes apparent that the loss of moral innocence is much more profound and far-reaching than the loss of naïveté. ... ... Admittedly, all of what's been said here has been painted in nothing more than the most broad and faint strokes. They may have called to mind some war films. But whether or not they were able to evoke the kind of personal details that are the stuff of the truly good war stories probably depends, most of all, on whether one has experienced war or not. ... This doesn't mean the experience of combat veterans only. It can also mean the experience of a wife or girlfriend, a mother or father, or even a friend. Still, it is almost certain that the experiences of the combat vet will more easily fill in the broad strokes with vivid detail ... and with a meaning very different than whatever meaning may take shape for the others. But the best war stories, whatever the perspective, are the ones which bring precisely these kinds of details to life. And so we come full circle to the question of whether and how such stories may be told. ...
To the extent that the story to be told is narrative -- with a firm sense of sequence and a fairly definite beginning and middle and end -- to that extent, film or the written word {or the spoken word} are all capable of the telling. But to the extent that film provides a medium that more easily conveys the quality of dream {or nightmare} -- in which sequence is, at best, suspect, if it matters at all -- to that extent, film may be in a better position to tell at least certain kinds of war stories. But stories like these, whatever the medium, are always partial stories. No matter how well they may arc across any of the experiences of war, they never manage to tell the entire story. That's not the fault of the storyteller, whichever medium he or she may choose. They don't tell the whole story of a war for a simple reason: They can't. Inextricably tied to the experience of war -- both for the G.I. and for others -- is the sense of what the war means for the nation. And the experience of war, from near or far, is almost inevitably tempered by such meaning.
In this context, however much individual war stories may be alike, the story of the war is not. The meaning of the Revolutionary War, for example, is not the same as the meaning of the Civil War, however much the individual experiences of combat may tempt us to think otherwise. In the most simple terms, the two differed in this respect: that in the former, we were united against a common enemy, while in the latter, we were divided against ourselves. That is why, for example, stories of the Civil War -- which show us former friends or even members of the same family on opposite sides -- are among the more compelling. Such stories tell us not only of the experiences of war on the battlefield, but the story of a nation divided. The same, then, holds for others wars, too. The relative lack of immediate threat which The Great War in Europe presented for many Americans, along with the first experiences of 'modern' warfare -- for the veterans on the battlefields and for their families back home, as the stories of the horror of the trenches became known -- both contribute to making the experience of WW I different from the World War which followed. Yet both of these, in which the nation as a whole seemed to be engaged, are different still than the experience of Korea, in which a relatively smaller portion of those eligible for service were actually called up and went. And Korea, in which most veterans went for the duration, was different still than Viet Nam, which saw veterans rotated through the war in 12- or 13-month tours. And how very different all these were from Desert Storm, which seemed, at least for those at home if not for those in the desert, to be over almost as soon as it began. In this light, neither the single film nor the single book can tell the whole story of a war. For that, one needs to hear many stories, and to read many accounts -- of the politicians who declared the war and their sense of national policy and purpose ... of those who disagreed with their assessments or course of action ... of historians who help to shed light on the accuracy of each ... and, of course, of veterans and their families, who are the ones who inevitably shoulder the daily burdens of war. In so doing, there will inevitably be variations, confusions, and even contradictions. But, unlike the individual war stories that may be told, the story of the war itself can only be told, if at all, after enough time has passed. ... But there is a danger here. ... The great danger is that with the passage of time -- by many if not by most -- the war will have been relegated to the status of a curiosity or of ancient history. As a consequence, the war will all but be forgotten. ... If that happens, however many individual stories we may have, and however important it may be to have them, we will never have the story of the war itself. . . ******* ******* If you would like to submit something for The Movies feature, or if you simply would like to suggest something you think we ought to cover, e-mail us at ... radiofilmtv@downstreetmagazine.com. ******* ******* If you would like to advertise in this section, or throughout the magazine, please visit our Advertising Info Pages ... or call, write, or e-mail ads@downstreetmagazine.com. ******* ******* |
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