Are we really the winners?

Rating: Null/10 (17 August 2001)

I recently read a professional review of this movie, where the person wondered why all war movies have the message of "War is hell, but we still won." After watching this movie again last night, I started to really wonder if we had won at all. I know that many people call this movie "pretentious", "boring", and "left me squirming." I wonder if they saw the same thing that I did. Sure Saving Private Ryan came out the same year and sure it was about WWII, and sure it had those 25 minutes, but somehow this movie conveys the absolute horrors of war far better than Saving Private Ryan did. I've noticed that some people have mentioned that they think that most of the people speak far to eloquently for rural men. Yet, the men only spoke poetry mostly in the voiceovers and the most of the characters who spoke like it were educated men like Bell and Staros. Also, if you look carefully at the nature images a lot of them mirror what is going on in the film. Everyone who has said that they hated it should really watch it again, don't expect a lot of physical action, this movie is about the mental states of everyone in the film. If you hate it still, I think that there must be something wrong, somewhere. I wouldn't all this the best movie ever made, but it certainly deserved it's Oscar nomination and certainly deserved its critical praise. I also recommend the soundtrack, but be forewarned that some images from the movie
may come while listening to it, which is one of the reasons that I think that both soundtrack and movie were great.