Generation War

A film that does not receive the critical acclaim that it deserves. A film that had me jumping for joy, but also weeping tears of sadness, and also had me at some points really grieving for German loss in the war as they shared their stories.

As a man that's experienced his fair share of abuse and recovered from it, I understand the world isn't quite as black and white as one may think. Abuses of humanity on this magnitude is not as straight forward as one may think. In this time you couldn't just say no to joining the army; you had to serve, or die.

We see this play out at the start as 6 seemingly harmless young teens who have been friends since school meet up regularly to have fun and rebel (as teens would do), until war strikes out. One of the friends is actually a Jew, and as we all know, quite a different future will be planned out for this man.

But, as life would have it the 6 carefree youngsters are happy and telling us that the war will be over by Christmas and they can all be back together having fun and reading and eating like they used to. It's all nice and lighthearted albeit, very naive, like we all were at that age.

This film is one of the best I've seen in the war, because it paints soldiers as humans, people with feelings, and understands the complexities and grey area surrounded by it all. It as well tackles the burning issue that most of the soldiers in this war weren't on-side of the mass murder of Jews, and were just doing their duty -- as most of them had friends, family members, and children they grew up at school with.

You can see the difference with our war movies where the Nazi's were horrifically brutal, emotionless, killing machines - and whilst there's somewhat truth in that, the reality is quite different. Most were regular guys fighting for their country because they had to.

One scene for me that was quite poignant was when one of the kids joined the army with his brother. He was a young, shy man, very impressionable, probably only 18, and when asked to do terrible stuff - like execute a prisoner he would not do it. He found the atrocity too much for his fragile mind to take. So his brother stepped in and did the deed for him.

Then fast forward to several years later, still alive, and in the same platoon, he was asked to execute along with some of the new army recruits some hostages because they led them into traps, and a lot of their men died. The young new army recruits couldn't do it - so he stepped in, emotionless, tainted by the horror of war and just killed them all, unflinching.

And that for me was a testament as to how stoic the human body and mind is. The more horrors and craziness we experience, the less tolerance to it we have, until it becomes normal. And this is the army in a nutshell.

To think that we (as a side) were purely the good guys then it makes you think. I'm sure a lot of real, decent, good Germans died in that war. Some that wanted no part of the Jew killing because their friends were Jews, and yet were forced to under law - the alternative was not a good one. Death I expect. Prison time, yes, but a Nazi prison was a death sentence

Probably one of my favourite war time films of all time this one. I must admit. I shant say more because then I'd be giving too much away if you haven't seen it.

But you'll laugh, you'll tear up, and you'll support your fellow humans in this one, and feel empathy where you haven't felt any before.

Posted using CineTV