Subject: Re: Band of Brothers
From: Tim O'Connor (tim@roughdraft.org)
Date: Mon Oct 08 2001 - 20:28:04 GMT
> I don’t know, Paul. Our television reviewers here echoed these
> same reactions – all as enthusiastic as your own. Yet as I watched
> I felt an increasing impatience that this was almost certainly NOT
> ‘the way it was’: that film & television are no more suited to
> the recreation of ‘reality’ than ballet or opera. They require
> the same kind of acceptance of conventions as any Noh theatre
> & we’ve all absorbed them long ago without realising it.
I never expected -- with this or any war movie, even one as
over-the-top as Apocalypse Now -- to know, the way a veteran would
know, the realities of war after sitting watching a big or little
screen.
What I did find happening, and it's a rarity for me these days, is
that I underwent the proverbial "suspension of disbelief" (something
that usually eludes me) enough that while I wouldn't try to fool
myself into thinking I was there or that I was experiencing anything
experienced by someone on the ground, I felt that with the right mood
and the right suspension of disbelief, I could start to see the
events through the eyes of the character or characters who were in
the thick of it. I found myself literally ducking when there would
be the PING of incoming sniper fire, or cringing at the howl of a
German 88. Or making myself very small when there were men cramped
into a foxhole.
That is, I allowed myself to be swayed by imagination to get as close
as a work of imagination could get to summoning up feelings about the
combat that was happening. But all the while, naturally, I was aware
of that fourth wall, aware that I was watching, not participating or
reliving, and actually said out loud, many times, "I could never have
done this" or "I would never have survived this."
Like Paul, I truly believe it was not for me -- I would never have
been allowed to don a uniform, actually, given a raft of
disqualifying conditions I suspect I have that would have ruled me
out of consideration for service. And if by chance I had been
accepted, I can't see myself surviving even a short while. I would
probably be the MOST likely candidate for a Section Eight. (Which
is, for those unfamiliar with the lingo, when you are mentally or
emotionally incapable of continuing to serve as a member of the armed
forces.)
That's not to say I don't admire the people who COULD do it. As
Cecilia so devastatingly depicted in her post about her uncle, the
wounds ran deep, and sometimes not always visible, and I have great
-- no, tremendous -- respect for anyone who jumped on June 6 or who
landed on the beach into the arms of the enemy. It's so far beyond
my direct life experience, I can barely approach it with my
imagination. I don't know how anyone did it and emerged i-n-t-a-c-t.
I've read the Stephen Ambrose history books, and still it escapes me
how the nation geared up, how regular Joes turned into heroes and
survivors, and how the Allies turned the wheels of fortune against a
dug-in opponent.
One other comment I must make, Scottie, is that your toss-away lines
are too memorable to pass up:
> or watching a brightly lit box in the corner
> of a cosy room while trying to ignore copulating family friends
> & dysfunctional pets.
Too much, too much, enough for me! Thank you for injecting something
very funny into a truly grave discussion.
> A common response to the World Trade atrocity was that it was
> ‘like watching a disaster movie’. But that was almost exactly what it
> was NOT like. A truer response was that it had the unreal quality
> of a dream.
Precisely. I went through it (no, I was not on site when it
happened; I was about 20 blocks away), and have carefully observed
the aftermath these last few weeks, and recently did an essay about
what it all has been like.
I found it to be terribly upsetting afterward, as I dredged up
memories and details, and as I observed people around me and their
responses. Just getting the essay on paper was awful, and, indeed, a
disaster movie was NOT what it was like -- except for the aftermath,
which reminded me of one of those horror movies with oversized
monster, where senseless people flee the site of the disaster.
That's what Broadway was like, because it was the main thoroughfare
for people heading north, away from the disaster and toward paths out
of the city. Dazed and dusty and palpably afraid.
More than a few people have sworn that they will never come back here
to work again, will not leave their safe houses in the suburbs. But
I don't know about that. On the one hand, a person needs to work to
pay the bills. And on the other hand, the suburbs are not really so
far away in the big scheme of things. You can only go so far. New
York is like both a magnet and an orbiting body that asserts its own
field of gravity.
> Reality combines both the familiar & the unexpected. When you’re
> running for your life across a ploughed field with your head down
> under a stream of Spandau fire, what you find surprising is that you
> have only two, maybe three, more breaths to take in the whole
> of this mortal life – a thought that is new, shocking & decidedly
> unexpected. But the taste of copper pennies in the mouth is familiar
> – from the first time when, as a child, you had to run a little beyond
> your capacity. This is the combination the realist artist has to try
> to capture. All the cinema can do is confusion & noise.
All I know for certain is that during some scenes, I didn't just
sweat from the tension and anxiety -- I felt myself dripping with
perspiration. There were more than a few occasions when I sensed
myself to be inside the heads of the characters, just as confused as
they were, just as unable to make sense of it all, just as lost. The
only difference was that I was, fortunately, not scared -- my ass
wasn't on the line, the way it was for the characters presented to us.
> If you asked Salinger ‘what it was like’ in the Hurtgen Forest I suspect
> he would give you the same wry, impotent smile that old soldiers
> have given me when I asked them the same question & they explained
> gently that ‘you probably had to be there.’
I'm sure. The only thing I can say is something I may have said here
before (forgive me if I repeat myself, but I can't remember what I've
said where) is that as I watched "Saving Private Ryan" and parts of
"Band of Brothers," I said to myself, and then to people after, "This
is where Sergeant X and the Seymour of 'Bananafish' and the soldier
in 'A Boy in France' came from. This horror is what spawned these
characters."
I believed that while watching the bloodbath of "Private Ryan," and I
believed it when I read Stephen Ambrose, and I believe it now.
Perhaps some writers could get through those battles and have their
human armor somewhat intact. But a sensitive, impressionable soul
like Salinger? I think it hardly likely that he survived without
considerable internal reshaping.
--tim
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