Strange, Beautiful...

Rating: Null/10 (24 June 1999)

The best piece of advice I have for anyone who hasn't seen this movie is to not think. As an amateur war historian (the Pacific theater in particular), I was excited at the possibilities of the movie showing the "other side" of WWII. However, I was completely unprepared for the haunting and strange journey TTRL took me through. Tedious in moments, ultimately the work is one of poetry in film, not a pseudo-verite, like "...Private Ryan". Also, unlike the Spielberg film, there is no moral base; there is only the sense of continuity that, as the film shows, points humanity back to nature. If I were to compare this film, I would actually reference Spielberg's "Empire Of The Sun". Both films deal with ordinary people in extraordinary situations, grasping for some semblance of humanity, yet never shying away from the elemental; life, death, and the beauty and tragedy in between.