Beautiful

Rating: 10/10 (1 May 1999)

Before I went to see this film, I had heard nothing of it. From quickly glimpsing at the advertising poster at the movie theater wall, I expected a typical, linear U.S. triumphalist war film with some movie stars.
I was completely wrong.
So happily wrong.
This movie is beautiful from the start to the end. Not because of all the images of nature or the poetry, but because nature and poetry get mixed with the horror of war in a perfect way. One of the great things in this movie is that we get into the skin of many of the characters, not only the U.S. soldiers but the Japanese soldiers too.
And the picture shooting is perfect too. There's a scene in which the camera points towards the hill from the bottom, before the attack, while the U.S. soldiers are trying to spot the Japanese soldiers that are shooting, camouflaged in the tall grass. It's impossible to spot the Japanese shooters, but still we feel the need to scan the whole screen with our eyes to try to find them. Brilliant touches like this one are common thing during the whole film.
If you found this film boring, it's because you wanted entertainment, not art.