A glorious failure

Rating: 10/10 (21 July 2007)

This movie has enough comments but I couldn't let the last two go. But first the interesting question for me about this movie is would have it been worse if Peckinpah had had the budget he wanted. He had plans for a great set piece ending with countless T-34s. Instead he had to improvise what we get. But what an improvisation. Amongst war films this is unquestionably a masterpiece and perhaps the greatest American war film ever made. To situate this hyperbolic remark my faves are the like of The Cruel Sea, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, The Battle of Algiers, and Come and See. But until special effects came in I think this film best captured the nature of combat. If anything it is not boring enough. Bad editing? Postmodern cretinism. Movies do not have to operate simply within their own confined space. Occasionally they strive to represent life. This film tries to do that, and that resolve for me absolves it of its manifest failings. Because life always undoes representation. And for film to capture its undoing by extreme moments of life, such as combat, is rare. I think there are glimpses of that in this film.