War turns men into animals

Rating: 9/10 (1 November 2014)

This is a movie about a tank: okay, it is about the tank crew, but the closing shot to this film told that the story is about the tank and its journey through the final stages of World War II. To be blunt, this is not a pretty film, but then war is never meant to be pretty. While World War II in many cases was a modern war, it is not as clean and surgical as wars are portrayed these days with sophisticated fighting machines that you can plug your iPhone into so you can listen to music while rumbling across the desert. This was a dirty war where people fought using dirty tactics, especially at the end.
We all know the story about the rise and fall of Nazi Germany, and we all hear about the glorious battles that resulted in the Allies achieving victory, however we need to be reminded, time and again, what it was like to be a soldier in this war, especially in the closing stages. The Nazi's were not going to go down easily, and the closer the Allies got to Germany, the more vicious the Nazi's became. They even began recruiting children to fight for them, many of these children having grown up knowing no other government than Hitler's.
Mud plays an important part in this film as everywhere you look there is mud. Okay, there is the scene in the middle where they 'liberate' a town as spend some downtime in relative luxury, however that quickly comes to an end when they are ordered out to continue to fight, and just in time too, as becomes evident a little later on (though I won't necessarily say anything more than that).
The film is also a coming of age film, with the character of Nelson joining the fight at the end and coming to understand what war is really about. This was still the time when people saw fighting against the Nazi's as fighting the good fight, but it wasn't until their boots were on the ground that they realised the reality of the horror that war truly is. However we see Nelson thrown in with the battle hardened warriors who have been fighting since Africa and have fought battles all the way through Europe. We see this contrast especially at the beginning with Nelson's clean white face standing out against the dirty grime covered faces of the veterans.
War changes Nelson, and he goes from being an innocent boy entering war for the first time, afraid of killing a defenceless person because 'it is just not right' to killing any person that vaguely looks like the enemy. While we see this change in Nelson, I still could not get past the fact that the veterans who have been fighting this war for years at this time know only one thing and that is how to fight and to kill. The question that this raises is whether it is possible for these veterans to be able to return to a life of peace?