This should've been titled "ZOOMERS are losing THEIR FRIGGING MINDS over these 6 IDIOTIC REASONS David Lean is considered a rather DECENT director on the whole."
1 of my favorite dialog is from Tv show Mr. Robot. "U can't force an Agenda Mr. Alderson, u have to inspire one" . Even though its a simple line its something every writer today should be told. Amazing video as always.
I like your channel because you actually appreciate older movies (from the 30s, 40s, and 50s). Nowadays a movie from the 80s is considered old. But the movies that were considered old classics when I was growing up, the ones they showed on TCM and AMC (that's right, AMC used to actually show classic movies), were those from the Golden Age of Hollywood. It is sad to me that vast swaths of the population today know next to nothing about these movies and can't be bothered to sit through them. Yes, they have a slower pace, which makes them hard to watch for today's attention-span challenged generation. But, man, were they artful! Man, were they beautifully composed! The people who made those movies knew how to tell a story. And if you watch the movies of today back-to-back with those old Golden Age classics, the contrast in quality is stunning. There was an artform called the motion picture, once. But those days are gone.
No one delivers irony better than William Holden. He epitomized the best characteristics of the mythic American man; intelligence, pragmatism, strength, stamina, humor and the wisdom to recognize absurdity. BTW, I save every one of your videos. You too demonstrate some of the attributes Mr. Holden portrays. I leave it to you to figure out which ones. 😉
This film came out the year I was born. I remember being captivated by it the first time I saw it on TV as a young teen. It remains one of my favorite films and I thank this channel for illuminating aspects that never occurred to me.
Fantastic review and analysis. I have always felt William Holden deserves far more mention as one of the true greats of film ; Not just this film and Sunset Boulevard but also Stalag 17; where he also plays a prisoner of war, anti-hero and "outsider" I find William Holden's performance outstanding, whatever he does on screen, you root for him! He has to be a contender for the best "outsider" in cinema history?!
Your accent and baritone is so similar to Arnold Schwarzenegger that that's who I imagine narrating your videos, especially when you shout :) probably sounds mean but it brings me joy and it's kinda cool
I think the problem is people have been taught in schools about the underlying meanings and subtext of stories, and believe that is how a story should work. I remember learning about various stories in English about how this means that, or this story is about such a thing, etc. But I was never once taught about why a story is good in the first place. The characters and the plot. If you don't have a good plot and good characters, but have a message to tell, then all you're making is propaganda. If you don't have a message, but you have good plot and good characters, then you've at least got a good story. Any message or meaning should be the icing on an already delicious cake. But nobody wants to eat just the icing, and no amount of icing will make a turd taste nice.
I don't agree with the similitude: IMO the message is the nutritious content of a recipe (we say "food for thought"). You can cook a delicious dish but very unhealthy or with minimum nutritional value (cakes and biscuits and sausages and such), or you can cook a very nutrient but very unsavory dish. But the art is when you can cook a very healthy and with high nutritional value dish, AND make it very good and a pleasure for eyes and taste.
Yeah, but it's not "subtext" that is the problem. As is pointed out The Bridge on the River Kwai has as much subtext as they can put into it. It's when there's no subtext and they're just bullhorning a message at us that there's a problem. Which at the end of the day is simply a consequence of bad writing and studios that care nothing for quality. None of those involved want to do the work to make an actual good movie. No one who's actually honed their screenwriting craft can get work on big budget films anymore.
When I watched this film as a kid, it went way over my head. I didn't get why the British officer agreed to cooperate with the Japanese *after* his hunger strike protesting the forced work. Etc. Etc. I thought both the British and Japanese in this film had gone crazy. NOTE: to commemmorate his collaborating with the Japanese, the British officer even puts up a plaque on the bridge where it says this bridge was built by both Japanese and British forces. Only the American character who escaped and was later forced to volunteer for the mission to blow up the bridge made any sense.
I wish Moviewise made a comparison to the scene in The Great Escape where British Officers explicitly said it is a soldier's duty to do all he can to escape so he can disrupt the enemy from behind the lines, even if they get caught anyway they were able to force the enemy to waste manpower they could've used on the frontlines during that time. Although this movie makes no sense: where are the gleeful Japanese bayoneting downed men for fun, katana decapitations from officers etc? Even if Japan did sign but not ratified the Geneva convention, no Japanese POWs were killed in Allied camps while just with this Burma "Death" Railway alone, 100,000 Allied POWs died. Eric Lomax, a survivor of a Japanese prison labor camp forced to build the "Death Railway" himself wrote an autobiography "The Railway Man" and criticized the Bridge over the River Kwai, because there is no way there'd be POWs that fat building the Death Railway. Saito himself though, had the least amount of courtesy here because he graduated from an English college, iirc. Still a nice officer in the building of a railway that killed 100,000 Allied POWs makes no sense. He has no business being here. It's like having some background story to explain why these particular Auschwitz wardens were 10x nicer than reality. Gives the wrong image.
I would submit "A Separation" (Iranian Palme d'Or in 2011) as a great movie with an unstated message. Or possibly several messages. I watched it twice, and saw a different theme each time: The first time, I saw a movie about class struggle. The second time I saw a movie about integrity vs compromission (the message being, as I got it: Truth is perilous but lies are destructive). And I know many saw a film about an oppressive system - which I didn't, but what I find great about it is that all those message don't necessarily contradict each other. They may very well cohabit within a single movie.
@@Moviewise While I also enjoyed the video, I believe it was only because I agreed with what you were saying already. Therefore, I ironically dislike the heavy-handedness with which you presented your agenda. That having been said, irony itself was the technique which you said more effectively communicated the message than the message itself, and here, you have somehow managed to push the irony beyond the text itself and into the real life experience of the viewer, making this video uniquely transcendent and - dare I say - surpassing of the original _Bridge..._ itself. You are consequently and unironically deserving of the equivalent of an Oscar (ironically enough).
We all know what present-day Hollywood is doing is picking the safest bets (household IPs), milking it dry, and minimizing the risks. It makes perfect sense from a business standpoint. The REAL problem are the people who buy tickets to see it.
I think a good movie can change a person's perspective about a topic. The movie Blood Diamond did a good job of making people aware of the bad side of buying diamonds.
I'm not sure it's about whether a good movie can change a person's perspective, but rather whether the message has been heard or not. The messages in movies nowadays is something we all know about. It's nothing new. We all know racism is bad. We all know woman can do anything a man can. Back in Charles Dickens' day, it wasn't common knowledge about what goes on in the poorer parts of British society. He decided to shed a light on that area, and it likely began to open people's minds to how other people were often treated. As such, the movie you referenced (though I haven't seen it) may be more effective as it isn't something that many people are aware of. At the end of the day, it still needs to be a good story, regardless of the message.
Best a movie (or a book) can hope for is to raise awareness about an issue or to make a person wonder about a problem they have never thought about. It might bring a new different perspective to the table, sure, but this doesn't change the fact it is never going to make anyone re-evalute the values they already believe in. And with sexism, racism etc. everyone has their own mind already made up and everyone is aware of the problem, we are in fact bombarded with those points over and over again. So it doesn't really make sense to make a 10000th movie about that. But a movie shedding light on a little known issue? Definitely worth it.
A great recent example for me was Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant. Pretty standard military action flick with the typical Ritchie-isms; however I had no clue as to how Afghan interpreters got screwed over by America. After the film I spent hours going down that rabbit hole, all thanks to a type of film I don’t even typically enjoy in the first place.
It’s hard to pick a favorite “message” movie, but Tarkovsky’s 1972 “Solaris” showed how it may be impossible for humans to understand extra-terrestrial life OR other humans.
Was just talking about this film with my brother recently. It's the best war film, and also, the story of how it got made, with the producers waiting for the studio head to go on vacation, so they could fool whomever into cutting them a check so they could make the film. By they time the studio head found out, they were so far into production, and they had spent so much money, that he couldn't can the film. But there were similarities between the story behind the scenes and the one on camera. I wish I could remember the details better. Saw a piece about it I believe on AMC back in the 90s. So, the details are very foggy. But seriously. Truly one of the only modern warfare films worth watching.
Brilliant analysis. Its one of my favorite war movies so I've watched a lot of reviews and you're hitting on some really good points that no one else has mentioned and i had never thought about before.
To Kill a Mockingbird - racism The Lost Weekend - booze Requiem for a Dream - drugs will steal your soul All That Money Can Buy - don't sell your soul to the devil A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - Life is hard, family is everything
Even without using intensive cutting , and alot of dialogue and shit , the simple sequence at the end was one of the most nail biting sequence i have ever seen , it was a result of brilliant writing and two hours of great setup
I'm so excited to find a you tuber who loves classic films as much as I do. It's sad that most people now have never seen a film that came out before they were born. Also sad that people won't watch world cinema because of subtitles.
Most truly great movies have much to say that cannot be be reduced to easily digestible phrases. What movie on war had more to say on its unspeakable horrors, and on the depths of inhumanity, than the late Soviet era film, "Come and See"?
What usually makes a "message" film bad is if it harangues the audience like a prosecuting lawyer's final statement to a jury which has heard no evidence to justify a conviction. I think it's better to think of your film as evidence which might lead an audience towards making the conclusion on their own. Earn your audience's conclusion. Convince them by example. Is that always going to work? No. Will it stand a better chance of influencing a neutral viewer? Yes. Will it almost certainly be a better film than a harangue? Hell, yes.
"Can you believe it? A female hero." You mean like Wonder Woman? She was on screen when I was a kid and in comics even before that, and I'm 53. Or the bionic woman. My god, have these people lived under rocks all their lives?
Excellent analysis of perhaps the greatest anti-war film ever made. My only comment would be to point out that the last words spoken in the film are by the doctor who, after observing the wreckage of the bridge and carnage caused, exclaims the summation of the film's message: "Madness... Madness." However, the overall point of the video is that doing a "message" movie takes a good deal of artistic effort, otherwise it is just dull and ineffective lecturing. Kwai works because it embraces the ambiguities and does not do more than hint at its underlying message that war, even for the best of causes, is a form of madness. Modern writers do not seem to understand that point.
Kwai, Sunset Boulevard, Stalag 17, even Sabrina…William Holden was one of the GOATs and one of my favorites. Sad that when Lori Anderson sang in Tom’s Diner, “I open up the paper, There's a story of an actor, Who had died while he was drinking, It was no one I had heard of;” the actor was William Holden.
Don't know about the best, but IMO "Serenity" is an effective message movie, the message being "you just can't control individuals with authoritarian methods. Their individuality keeps popping out in unexpected ways." Great action, great characters (each of whom is a defined individual, even including the antagonist), and the dialogue is delightful.
You're talking about needing great screenwriting via tight character motives, dialogue, and actual intellegence. I just have to ask: have you seen Andor? The characters are absolutely eloquent and they drive everything forward. It's so good. Just tell me if you've seen it or not.
It's a good war movie,but not my favorite.Even so,your point about intelligent script writing/dialogue is on point. And Carl Foreman,who co wrote the script would go on to do another classic war movie - "Guns of Navarone".
M*A*S*H (more the TV show than the movie), Dr. Strangelove, and Full Metal Jacket are also good examples of how you do an antiwar message without being preachy.
It's definitely not a perfect series by any means, but I would be curious to hear your thoughts on andor. Theres some great character dialogue and some pretty incredible speeches
I was an army officer for 10 years, and I’ve always thought that Colonel Nicholson get something of a bad review. There is quite a lot to admire about his character. He is a gentlemanly officer, maybe more well suited to an older time, though also perhaps a time that never existed at all. Some characteristics that recommend him would be his unyielding will, his military bearing and gentlemanly manner, his rationality, even though he sometimes comes to unusual conclusions, and even his desire to make the best bridge comes from some idealized view he has of himself and his peers-the British military. Pride is a military value to a certain degree. Though most European countries as well as America teach their soldiers that it’s the duty of a prisoner of war to escape and never stop trying to escape, the discussion they have in which he points out that their entire unit was ordered to surrender, thus casting doubt on the correct course, came across as very plausible. Anyway, I’m not a Nicholson apologist, but I do think he was a good soldier in his own way. He wasn’t cowardly or stupid. He just lost sight of the full scope of his duty. it reminds me of the saying "rectitude carried to excess hardens into stiffness". I hope I’m making some kind of sense. I’ve seen this movie three times and I love it, but I always find myself admiring Nicholson from certain angles. Something makes one want to root for the ideal gentleman officer. each of his decisions misses the mark, but there’s always something correct about his reasoning. With the bridge, he wants to show British ingenuity and work ethic. He wants his men to not become demoralized, but rather to stay proud. These are not bad things by themselves. they only become bad when taken as part of the full scope of his duty. though at the end, when he tries to stop it from being destroyed, it’s clear he’s become kind of insane. Though again, I could see that happening to a prisoner who after putting their mind into a project them gets attached to it.
Spot on. Kwai brings the incongruities of human nature to the fore of a war themed film. It's human nature that causes conflict moreso than the usually defined 'causes' of war.
Movies have gotten worse in general, but there are still some incredible newer films like 1917. The Bridge on the River Kwai is one of my favorite movies even though it came out nearly 20 years before I was born.
Great analysis - and I think Alec Guinness leads an exceptional cast of fantastic actors. But Casablanca is still the greatest film to deliver a message.
The commentary on war being empty and people going against their nature where characters are dumb playing by the rules and some to poke at their dumbness. It is utterly pointless and thats show not tell. It took me a while to get the picture. Thank you. If i think i got it wrong. Liked and subbed😊
As far as political “message” movies go, I have always had a soft spot for Lena Wertmuller, Frank Capra, and Gillo Pontecorvo. Hands over the City, and the Organizer are also pretty great.
The unfortunate omission from the Bridge on the River Kwai is that the Geneva convention was never required to be applied to Japanese soldiers, and hence Japan did not ratify it. Which would have explained the actions of Saito a little better.
WRONG. Total lie, or false excuse from Japanese propaganda. Show me where it says it didn't apply to Japanese soldiers. Still, even when not protected because Japan didn't ratify it, no Japanese POWs died in the Allied camps while 100,000 Allied POWs died being forced to build that "Death Railway" which the Bridge over the River Kwai was part of. Moviewise is dumb, thinking "war is pointless" is some deep wisdom, because that's false. It's like he doesn't know the Japanese were INVADING the place where it takes place. *Every Japanese dead here is a local civilian family rescued from being raped to death.* After killing 2 million in Vietnam. After 25 million in Capitalist China. After communizing these places just like the Nazi's destruction of Eastern Europe easily communized it right afterwards. Although, Moviewise is actually smarter in one area, than most dumb folks who watched that film thinking Nicholson was in the right. A fascist military funded by 500,000 Japanese girls sold as Karayuki-san sex slaves overseas during the Meiji Era alone _(altho the term "Karayuki-san" meaning "Miss Gone to China" was coined in 1800s, the tradition goes back to 1500s as can be seen in Hideyoshi's missive with Luis Frois, who also witnessed Mabiki when Japanese mothers find they cannot afford to raise children, they kneel on their throats, which later 1800s scholar Nobuhiro Satou gives specific numbers per region and concludes 1/3 of Japanese households kill a baby each year, due to 60-80% tax rates per region),_ then 500,000 according to Molemans' research, mostly foreign girls as "comfort women" later to raise morale of troops, must be stopped. War is not pointless. Too bad Moviewise didn't make a comparison to The Great Escape where the British Officers in a prison camp run by the Luftwaffe (non specific camp, and Luftwaffe had the elite and the most cultured so it makes sense why that camp was lenient) explicitly said it is a soldier's duty to do all he can to escape so he can disrupt the enemy from behind the lines, even if they get caught anyway they were able to force the enemy to waste manpower they could've used on the frontlines during that time. Although this movie makes no sense: where are the gleeful Japanese bayoneting downed men for fun, katana decapitations from officers etc? Even if Japan did sign but not ratified the Geneva convention, no Japanese POWs were killed in Allied camps while just with this Burma "Death" Railway alone, 100,000 Allied POWs died. But Japanese soldier with photo of families? So what? It's like the millions of ppl those Japanese soldiers gasbombed and germbombed (Even Hitler repeatedly said, Germans must NEVER use WMDs in war, not even for defense) and scheduling the extension of WMD bombing from Asia to also America by September of 1945 (Operation Cherry Blossoms at Night) to buy time to finish their 2 Japanese nukes, they killed 30 million in WW2 alone, not counting for decades of nonstop invasions before this, don't count as people? Again, I repeat, every Japanese invader dead is another family saved/avenged so that this will never repeat again. Not killing them is what enabled them to come all the way to Southeast Asia in the first place! Eric Lomax, a survivor of a Japanese prison labor camp forced to build the "Death Railway" himself wrote an autobiography "The Railway Man" and criticized the Bridge over the River Kwai, because there is no way there'd be POWs that fat building the Death Railway. Saito himself though, had the least amount of courtesy here because he graduated from an English college, iirc. Still a nice officer in the building of a railway that killed 100,000 Allied POWs makes no sense. He has no business being here. It's like having some background story to explain why these particular Auschwitz wardens were 10x nicer than reality. Gives the wrong image. Japan's response to America's embargo on Oil exports that was fueling their nonstop war machine, was not to stop warmongering, but to invade more. Indonesia was invaded for its oil fields, to be precise. Vietnam for its grain. Every nation in Asia communized or half-communized and has been forced to bleed money on active military expenses instead of economic development, was due to Japanese. Also, Japan funded communists like Lenin, Plekhanov, Kropotkin, Gorky etc. through their embassy that ran from Russia to Switzerland once Japan started the war on Capitalist Russia without declaration of war, as per foul Japanese tradition. (Did you know it took 1 whole week after signing the declarations of war just for the 1st battle to happen in WW1? And that's after working out the date to get all parties though to be involved in the same room, so everyone knew the war was coming long before that.) *NO WONDER 1 BILLION ASIANS CHEERED FOR THOSE NUKES IN 1945.* It's like how Star Wars ended with 2 big explosions in the Empire and much cheering from the galaxy. Even if Japan tries to hide 1/3 of casualties of the nukes were forced laborers just like the ones dying to build the Burma "Death" Railway, forced to make munitions for the fascists. Also Hiroshima was the poison gas bomb production hub of Japan. Look at previous generations like Kodaira Yoshio in the 1920s, what did this NAVYMAN do? He said with his comrades he would land and go raiding coastal towns and violating little girls in front of their parents and kill them all afterwards. His generation was addicted to such war crimes for years, and in his case, he kept doing that right into postwar. These are the "Japanese civilians." Veteran rapists, sex slavers, butchers of civilians, and cannibals, thieves, looters, pillagers whose economy was built on robbing others and communizing them. Why do you think Japanese economy failed and in 1945 had a debt to GDP ratio of 200% which they resolved by confiscating money right out of people's bank accounts? Without the trillions of dollars over the Cold War from USA, they would've starved. And this also explains that once the Cold War was over in the 90s, it's no coincidence they've been suffering a recession they call "The Lost 30 Years" The only reason China is communist is because Japan allied with the CCP and avoided fighting each other while the Capitalists bled. Fan Hannian was the communist liaison invited to the Shanghai Iwai Consulate and trade intel on Capitalist Chinese forces. Then in May of 1945, the CCP attacked from the West, the Japanese continued the 8 year offensive from the East, and squeezed the gasbombed/germbombed Capitalist Chinese in an impossible two-front war. There is virtually no country in history that survived a two-front war on land, mind you. Mao Zedong thanked General Saburou Endou in 1956 for the fascist Japanese saving him and the CCP back in WW2. He also thanked Japan when two Japanese socialists visited in 1964. He also thanked Japan for saving the CCP to PM Kakuei Tanaka in 1972, right after Japan became the 1st nation to sever ties with Capitalist China (Taiwan) and only recognize the CCP as the legitimate government of China with full UN Security Council veto powers. Japan even used the police to physically kick out the Capitalists in the embassy and escort the Communists in there. Then for the next 10 years, the US Tech and Trillions of tax dollars meant for the Asian version of the Marshall plan if Japan didn't communize it all first, wouldn't be enough for Japan who was not asked by America for a single penny on war reparations, and instead would do things like send corporate spies like Jun Naruse from Hitachi to steal US Semiconductor tech (he got caught by the FBI), or steal things like Walkman from Andreas Pavel and use the illegal gains to sue the inventor to bankruptcy to claim Japan made all these things through their own genius (even hiring thugs to raid Pavel's lawyers offices to steal legal documents). Or even, in the 80s, be caught selling to the USSR some US tech specifically listed as a security risk that must never fall to Soviet hands through the CoCOM accords, and narrowing the gap between US and USSR tech, leading to the 80s rise in military spending at the cost of social programs. Lefties blame all that on Reagan, when they really should go look for politicians hammering Japanese electronic products out in front of Congress under signs saying "The Capitalists themselves because they are so greedy will sell us the rope with which to hang them."
By the way the Daihon'ei high command also didn't care about the nuclear casualties, numbers like that by 1945 was a dime a dozen anyway. It is fact that when they heard the reports they hardly gave pause, and went back to arguing with each other on how to trick Americans into a peace treaty that returns to Japan all the invaded islands liberated by America. Same thing with Nagasaki. The only thing that forced them into surrender was the report that Soviets liberated Manchuria, and were poised to land on northern Japan. They feared being split up like German was back in June of 1945. So that's why it took more than 0 nukes convince them to surrender... only to America and not USSR. You think a government cared when it told ppl like on Saipan and Okinawa that they must kill all their children and then commit suicide, because Americans will eat their babies and violate them, when the reason they did this was to save face, by not letting anyone be liberated and realizing they've been told lies by the fascist government all along? If you go read how much the Okinawans hate them for making them kill their own children (while it turns out Japan was the one that conscripted schoolgirls from Okinawa and violated them like the Himeyuri girls) and centuries of 90% tax rates by samurai, you will see the truth. Did you know after cannibalizing the American POWs on Chichijima Island, Japan claimed that those men were killed by their own American bombers because they bomb too much, and when it was found out, they lucked out because the press on their cannibalism died when the victims said they didn't want their boys' terrible fates to be widely known, so Japan could hide their true nature even better? I laugh when naive weebs think the tale of the Japanese who didn't surrender is supposed to be some heroic message. Not even Japanese believed their own propaganda by 1945, simply because they were the very men in the situation of being forced to throw their lives away... yet weebs still worship those tales. Kamikazes? It's been told multiple times even fascist pilots said they never saw anyone who liked blowing themselves up, it was a stupid waste of men. Not that anyone high up in the Daihon'ei high command cared, it was the National Shinto religion that brainwashed that to go ALLAHU AKBAR by planes, boats, submarines, manned torpedos, manned antitank mines, diving suits, etc. all designed ground-up to have no other weapon but the suicide bomb, will bring them to be worshiped as minor gods alongside the One True God Emperor Hirohito. And Zen Buddhists, (read, Zen at War) brainwashed ppl that to genocide other races is to liberate them for nirvana, and that blowing yourself up will bring them to Pure Land Zen Paradise. You know why the soldiers didn't surrender? Because they were sure that they would be tried and executed for the tons of war crimes they were told was just normal to do because their fathers and grandfathers did as well. They holed up in island caves and split into cliques and ate each other once the natives were happily liberated by American forces. Some real life Lord of the Flies shit. What "Samurai Honor" is there in that? That's just propaganda. (The real bloodthirsty samurai of 1500s back when they were selling many girls to foreign slavers for muskets to kill each other better, were backstabbers who justified their betrayals as "pragmatic," like Harukata Sue betraying his master Yoshitaka Ouchi, or Mitsuhide Akechi killing his lord Nobunaga Oda. These violent samurai would laugh at 1700s Confucianized ones "dying for their lord" ). It's like Wehrmacht surrendered to US Forces far easier than the Waffen SS did, who knew they were going to be executed anyway for committing way more war crimes than Wehrmacht. Except in the case of Japan, imagine if the entire military was like the Waffen SS. Also, they already saw their families get lynched by Japanese civilian mobs if they ever surrendered, for raising a cowardly "hikokumin (non-national)" son. Some soldiers kept journals. Well they didn't have a care for the underage girls they raped in military brothels, with *80-MAN DAILY RAPE QUOTAS.* Those There are even records of Japanese trying to claim no war crime happened because they have here a "contract" signed by a 10-year old... forcing kids to sign contracts they have no idea what it is about (the contract says they will only "comfort" the soldiers, nothing about giving them sex, which is what really happened. It's 10x worse than "contracts" signed by illiterate Pressganged sailors)
@@CrabTastingMan I'm surprised your comment hasn't been pounced upon yet by the mob who copy-paste walls and walls auto-translated text referring you to 12 different blogsites about how it's all the Koreans' fault.
I just watched China Gate. A 50s? movie. With Nat King Cole as a soldier in Indochina. A decent role in a decent movie. A decent message. So subtle that you didn't notice it. So there nevertheless.
Movies need to say something to resonate otherwise they are soon forgotten like Fast and the Furious. They must not lecture or force the message, though. Best to leave out speeches as much as possible too (which is why I don't like Sorkin that much)
"I know authors who use subtext. And they're all COWARDS!" - Garth Marenghi Jokes aside. I usually have no real problem with blunt messaging. Sometimes I even enjoy it. Lazy storytelling though. Me hate that. Preach all ye want. But do not waste my time, mr filmmakers.
Love your vids and love your analysis, but I have to respectfully disagree in relation to war movies, which can be very definitely divided into pro and anti-war. For me the difference between the two is not the degree of suffering or bloodshed depicted, but in fact lies in two elements: motivation and outcomes. In a pro war movie the motivation behind the actions depicted, (certainly by "our" side), are positive; oppose oppression, defend freedom, defend the homeland etc etc. Or they can be more small-scale; get your men out alive, complete the mission so someone else doesn't have to. And secondly, the actions achieve positive outcomes; the battle is won, freedom is defended, oppression vanquished. So the key elements of a pro-war movie are that the protagonists are motivated by worthy goals, and their actions and sacrifice are ultimately meaningful and have a point. For example: 1989's Glory, They Were Not Divided, The Way Ahead, Back to Baatan, Band of Brothers In contrast, the main characters in an anti-war movie are motivated by selfish and negative instincts; take for example Paths of Glory; the General is motivated by a desire for promotion, the Lieutenant by a desire to cover up his own cowardice, and so the sacrifice of their men has no meaning or higher purpose. And again the outcomes are futile; the blood and death achieves nothing. My favourite example is the closing scene of Bridge at Remagen. All the anti-war elements are there; the men are being pushed across the bridge because the Major wants to look good in front of his superiors, but the final scene is the clincher, when the closing credits announce that the bridge fell down mere days after it was captured, suggesting that all that sacrifice and death was for nothing. (This is not historically correct, by the way; the capture of the bridge was of vital importance). So for me movies can very definitely be pro or anti war, and the difference is not bloodshed or death, it is the purpose of that bloodshed, and the motivation of those directing it.
It sucks when a movie's narrative grinds to a halt so a character can preach something that's important to the writer. Characters don't even sound like characters anymore when this happens, they sound like the edgy opinionated provacative smug dipshit I had in every college class. Today's writers are short on life experiences - have any of them fought in a war? suffered any hardship or unique molding experience? or are they the same as the next spoiled film-school liberal-arts major - and just want to hear their opinions, often laden with emotion, coming out of every characters mouths?
Is the problem the writers? Or is the problem the studios? Or is the problem social media backlash? Or is it the audience? If good writing is valued, good screenplays will be chosen and more good writers will be successful leading to better writing. The source of the problem is not the writers.
It still baffles me how movies like Don't Look Up can be nominated for best screenplay at the major awards. There's no subtlety at all in it. It's like you are constantly bombarded with pies in your face and it's all the same insipid flavour. These kind of movies are not bad because of the message; they are bad because the way they deliver it.
I'm late to the party, but I need to point out that you bought the message that racism equals a Southern accent. Sadly, that's almost universal in American entertainment. The story could be set in the middle of Los Angeles or New York, and the character could be from Chicago or Detroit, but if they are a racist, there is a 90% chance they develop a Southern twang, even if it is subtle. The television show Law and Order is particularly egregious in this matter. The most virulently racist Americans I have ever met have been from northeastern cities.
@@CrazyMazapan I think you already know that at least half the population HATES woke stuff right? Let’s face it, many of UA-cam’s most popular channels make all their money explicitly hating on “Woke Culture”. Hating “Woke” is a better business model that loving on it. So given that’s the case, why did Barbie make 1.4 billion dollars already? Obviously people found it smart, subtle and unexpected, not offensively ”woke”. You can’t make 1.4 billion dollars by only appealing to wokesters. You can’t make 1.4 billion dollars by only appealing to a segment of the audience. That would be impossible. (I’m not saying it’s Bridge on the River Kwai level of classic quality though).
@petercornwell5880 😂😂😂 No one came to Barbie for its message. They came to Barbie because of all the hot pink in it. Remember girls just want to have fun. That is all.
@petercornwell5880 No one came to see Robcop because of its political message. They came to see Robocop because of all the violence. Remember, boys, what you gonna do what you gonna do when they come for you. That is all.
Wait. Wasn't the train full of Allied prisoners? I thought the was a line about the prisoners being moved to another camp and as a reward for their work, they got to travel on that train.
A hint might be that they were backlisted. Like today's outspoken characters they are shadow banned or de platformed, imprisoned or assassinated. If you sideline your best writers and thinkers, that's how you end up with rubbish endlessly. And it's considered double plus good.
He wasn't blacklisted for being 'outspoken', but because he had been a member of the Communist Party as a young man and was unfortunate enough to live in the McCarthy era. Kind of ironic that you should invoke Orwell lol.
Joke's on you, Moviewise, preaching is a valid way of delivering messages and has millennia of tradition. Just because you have no love for the ancient art of oratory, doesn't make "preaching" a bad thing. Also, just because you have a fixation with subtlety doesn't mean directness has no value.
How do you not have an enormous channel??? This is amazing
he's getting killed by his thumbnails
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Agreed! Great stuff!!
This should've been titled "ZOOMERS are losing THEIR FRIGGING MINDS over these 6 IDIOTIC REASONS David Lean is considered a rather DECENT director on the whole."
@@Elcore I was in my teens in the 1980s and I didn't get this movie at that time. So don't just blame zoomers 😛
1 of my favorite dialog is from Tv show Mr. Robot. "U can't force an Agenda Mr. Alderson, u have to inspire one" . Even though its a simple line its something every writer today should be told.
Amazing video as always.
I like your channel because you actually appreciate older movies (from the 30s, 40s, and 50s). Nowadays a movie from the 80s is considered old. But the movies that were considered old classics when I was growing up, the ones they showed on TCM and AMC (that's right, AMC used to actually show classic movies), were those from the Golden Age of Hollywood. It is sad to me that vast swaths of the population today know next to nothing about these movies and can't be bothered to sit through them. Yes, they have a slower pace, which makes them hard to watch for today's attention-span challenged generation. But, man, were they artful! Man, were they beautifully composed! The people who made those movies knew how to tell a story. And if you watch the movies of today back-to-back with those old Golden Age classics, the contrast in quality is stunning. There was an artform called the motion picture, once. But those days are gone.
It was CINEMA
gone? nope. but if we keep believing it, maybe it’ll come true!
The way you described The Bridge of River Kwai makes it look like the funniest comedy movie to ever be written lmao
In a sense it is. A bitter kind of comedy, a tragicomedy, something we Italians excelled at about the time this movie came out.
No one delivers irony better than William Holden. He epitomized the best characteristics of the mythic American man; intelligence, pragmatism, strength, stamina, humor and the wisdom to recognize absurdity. BTW, I save every one of your videos. You too demonstrate some of the attributes Mr. Holden portrays. I leave it to you to figure out which ones. 😉
This guy never misses. One banger after another.
This film came out the year I was born. I remember being captivated by it the first time I saw it on TV as a young teen. It remains one of my favorite films and I thank this channel for illuminating aspects that never occurred to me.
Fantastic review and analysis. I have always felt William Holden deserves far more mention as one of the true greats of film ; Not just this film and Sunset Boulevard but also Stalag 17; where he also plays a prisoner of war, anti-hero and "outsider" I find William Holden's performance outstanding, whatever he does on screen, you root for him! He has to be a contender for the best "outsider" in cinema history?!
Network
Paris when it sizzles
Your accent and baritone is so similar to Arnold Schwarzenegger that that's who I imagine narrating your videos, especially when you shout :) probably sounds mean but it brings me joy and it's kinda cool
I think the problem is people have been taught in schools about the underlying meanings and subtext of stories, and believe that is how a story should work. I remember learning about various stories in English about how this means that, or this story is about such a thing, etc. But I was never once taught about why a story is good in the first place. The characters and the plot.
If you don't have a good plot and good characters, but have a message to tell, then all you're making is propaganda.
If you don't have a message, but you have good plot and good characters, then you've at least got a good story.
Any message or meaning should be the icing on an already delicious cake. But nobody wants to eat just the icing, and no amount of icing will make a turd taste nice.
I don't agree with the similitude: IMO the message is the nutritious content of a recipe (we say "food for thought"). You can cook a delicious dish but very unhealthy or with minimum nutritional value (cakes and biscuits and sausages and such), or you can cook a very nutrient but very unsavory dish. But the art is when you can cook a very healthy and with high nutritional value dish, AND make it very good and a pleasure for eyes and taste.
Yeah, but it's not "subtext" that is the problem. As is pointed out The Bridge on the River Kwai has as much subtext as they can put into it. It's when there's no subtext and they're just bullhorning a message at us that there's a problem. Which at the end of the day is simply a consequence of bad writing and studios that care nothing for quality. None of those involved want to do the work to make an actual good movie. No one who's actually honed their screenwriting craft can get work on big budget films anymore.
Dude, you should be teaching film classes! Thank you for your channel!
He is in fact teaching mini-film classes.
Brilliant editing, V.O. and understanding of cinema and human psychology. Hats down and keep on going
This channel deserves waaay more credit. You're doing amazing work, man. Wow!
What I love about the commentator, otherwise video essayist of this channel, is his sense of irony. Or, shall I say his mastery of it.
When I watched this film as a kid, it went way over my head.
I didn't get why the British officer agreed to cooperate with the Japanese *after* his hunger strike protesting the forced work.
Etc. Etc.
I thought both the British and Japanese in this film had gone crazy.
NOTE: to commemmorate his collaborating with the Japanese, the British officer even puts up a plaque on the bridge where it says this bridge was built by both Japanese and British forces.
Only the American character who escaped and was later forced to volunteer for the mission to blow up the bridge made any sense.
I wish Moviewise made a comparison to the scene in The Great Escape where British Officers explicitly said it is a soldier's duty to do all he can to escape so he can disrupt the enemy from behind the lines, even if they get caught anyway they were able to force the enemy to waste manpower they could've used on the frontlines during that time.
Although this movie makes no sense: where are the gleeful Japanese bayoneting downed men for fun, katana decapitations from officers etc? Even if Japan did sign but not ratified the Geneva convention, no Japanese POWs were killed in Allied camps while just with this Burma "Death" Railway alone, 100,000 Allied POWs died.
Eric Lomax, a survivor of a Japanese prison labor camp forced to build the "Death Railway" himself wrote an autobiography "The Railway Man" and criticized the Bridge over the River Kwai, because there is no way there'd be POWs that fat building the Death Railway.
Saito himself though, had the least amount of courtesy here because he graduated from an English college, iirc. Still a nice officer in the building of a railway that killed 100,000 Allied POWs makes no sense. He has no business being here. It's like having some background story to explain why these particular Auschwitz wardens were 10x nicer than reality. Gives the wrong image.
I would submit "A Separation" (Iranian Palme d'Or in 2011) as a great movie with an unstated message. Or possibly several messages. I watched it twice, and saw a different theme each time: The first time, I saw a movie about class struggle. The second time I saw a movie about integrity vs compromission (the message being, as I got it: Truth is perilous but lies are destructive). And I know many saw a film about an oppressive system - which I didn't, but what I find great about it is that all those message don't necessarily contradict each other. They may very well cohabit within a single movie.
Blazing Saddles delivers a message squarely without descending into a manipulative preach fest. :)
I love this film and your humour is really funny to listen to. I was getting tired of those film channels who takes everything so serious...
this is a damn good video you deserve way more subscribers
Thank you! Getting there eventually
@@Moviewise While I also enjoyed the video, I believe it was only because I agreed with what you were saying already. Therefore, I ironically dislike the heavy-handedness with which you presented your agenda. That having been said, irony itself was the technique which you said more effectively communicated the message than the message itself, and here, you have somehow managed to push the irony beyond the text itself and into the real life experience of the viewer, making this video uniquely transcendent and - dare I say - surpassing of the original _Bridge..._ itself. You are consequently and unironically deserving of the equivalent of an Oscar (ironically enough).
I think this is the most effective video essay to ever deliver a message.
I like Goldwin's quote on remaking a movie. Don't remake a great movie. Remake a bad one and improve it. Which Hollywood has ignored.
We all know what present-day Hollywood is doing is picking the safest bets (household IPs), milking it dry, and minimizing the risks. It makes perfect sense from a business standpoint. The REAL problem are the people who buy tickets to see it.
Amazing how the whole movie is one man’s quest to get out of working while his men are forced to work
I think a good movie can change a person's perspective about a topic. The movie Blood Diamond did a good job of making people aware of the bad side of buying diamonds.
I'm not sure it's about whether a good movie can change a person's perspective, but rather whether the message has been heard or not.
The messages in movies nowadays is something we all know about. It's nothing new. We all know racism is bad. We all know woman can do anything a man can.
Back in Charles Dickens' day, it wasn't common knowledge about what goes on in the poorer parts of British society. He decided to shed a light on that area, and it likely began to open people's minds to how other people were often treated.
As such, the movie you referenced (though I haven't seen it) may be more effective as it isn't something that many people are aware of.
At the end of the day, it still needs to be a good story, regardless of the message.
@@JRCSalter Yeah, it was a really good movie.
Right, and look at how many jewelry stores closed their doors because of a mov---oh, wait.
Best a movie (or a book) can hope for is to raise awareness about an issue or to make a person wonder about a problem they have never thought about. It might bring a new different perspective to the table, sure, but this doesn't change the fact it is never going to make anyone re-evalute the values they already believe in. And with sexism, racism etc. everyone has their own mind already made up and everyone is aware of the problem, we are in fact bombarded with those points over and over again. So it doesn't really make sense to make a 10000th movie about that. But a movie shedding light on a little known issue? Definitely worth it.
A great recent example for me was Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant. Pretty standard military action flick with the typical Ritchie-isms; however I had no clue as to how Afghan interpreters got screwed over by America. After the film I spent hours going down that rabbit hole, all thanks to a type of film I don’t even typically enjoy in the first place.
It’s hard to pick a favorite “message” movie, but Tarkovsky’s 1972 “Solaris” showed how it may be impossible for humans to understand extra-terrestrial life OR other humans.
Was just talking about this film with my brother recently. It's the best war film, and also, the story of how it got made, with the producers waiting for the studio head to go on vacation, so they could fool whomever into cutting them a check so they could make the film. By they time the studio head found out, they were so far into production, and they had spent so much money, that he couldn't can the film. But there were similarities between the story behind the scenes and the one on camera. I wish I could remember the details better. Saw a piece about it I believe on AMC back in the 90s. So, the details are very foggy. But seriously. Truly one of the only modern warfare films worth watching.
I was not expecting a The Quarry reference but it worked so well lmao
Brilliant analysis. Its one of my favorite war movies so I've watched a lot of reviews and you're hitting on some really good points that no one else has mentioned and i had never thought about before.
This is the best channel about the art of cinema.
To Kill a Mockingbird - racism
The Lost Weekend - booze
Requiem for a Dream - drugs will steal your soul
All That Money Can Buy - don't sell your soul to the devil
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - Life is hard, family is everything
Even without using intensive cutting , and alot of dialogue and shit , the simple sequence at the end was one of the most nail biting sequence i have ever seen , it was a result of brilliant writing and two hours of great setup
I die laughing at your delivery of every critique. My kind of dark brutal humor l. Love the channel
I'm so excited to find a you tuber who loves classic films as much as I do. It's sad that most people now have never seen a film that came out before they were born. Also sad that people won't watch world cinema because of subtitles.
Most truly great movies have much to say that cannot be be reduced to easily digestible phrases. What movie on war had more to say on its unspeakable horrors, and on the depths of inhumanity, than the late Soviet era film, "Come and See"?
The message is not hidden, but I love Paths of Glory. Kirk Douglas ablaze.
What usually makes a "message" film bad is if it harangues the audience like a prosecuting lawyer's final statement to a jury which has heard no evidence to justify a conviction. I think it's better to think of your film as evidence which might lead an audience towards making the conclusion on their own. Earn your audience's conclusion. Convince them by example. Is that always going to work? No. Will it stand a better chance of influencing a neutral viewer? Yes. Will it almost certainly be a better film than a harangue? Hell, yes.
To your question, 'Come and See'. Another perfect movie.
To be fair I don’t think the Japanese government actually signed the Geneva Convention.
"Can you believe it? A female hero." You mean like Wonder Woman? She was on screen when I was a kid and in comics even before that, and I'm 53. Or the bionic woman. My god, have these people lived under rocks all their lives?
Excellent analysis of perhaps the greatest anti-war film ever made. My only comment would be to point out that the last words spoken in the film are by the doctor who, after observing the wreckage of the bridge and carnage caused, exclaims the summation of the film's message: "Madness... Madness." However, the overall point of the video is that doing a "message" movie takes a good deal of artistic effort, otherwise it is just dull and ineffective lecturing. Kwai works because it embraces the ambiguities and does not do more than hint at its underlying message that war, even for the best of causes, is a form of madness. Modern writers do not seem to understand that point.
Kwai, Sunset Boulevard, Stalag 17, even Sabrina…William Holden was one of the GOATs and one of my favorites. Sad that when Lori Anderson sang in Tom’s Diner, “I open up the paper, There's a story of an actor, Who had died while he was drinking, It was no one I had heard of;” the actor was William Holden.
Excellent job, well stated! Now if only Hollywood would listen, perhaps there wouldn't be so many empty theaters.
Don't know about the best, but IMO "Serenity" is an effective message movie, the message being "you just can't control individuals with authoritarian methods. Their individuality keeps popping out in unexpected ways." Great action, great characters (each of whom is a defined individual, even including the antagonist), and the dialogue is delightful.
You're talking about needing great screenwriting via tight character motives, dialogue, and actual intellegence. I just have to ask: have you seen Andor? The characters are absolutely eloquent and they drive everything forward. It's so good. Just tell me if you've seen it or not.
I haven't watched alot of these classics but I did enjoy "Farewell to Arms" . I think it fits the criteria.
It's a good war movie,but not my favorite.Even so,your point about intelligent script writing/dialogue is on point.
And Carl Foreman,who co wrote the script would go on to do another classic war movie - "Guns of Navarone".
M*A*S*H (more the TV show than the movie), Dr. Strangelove, and Full Metal Jacket are also good examples of how you do an antiwar message without being preachy.
It's definitely not a perfect series by any means, but I would be curious to hear your thoughts on andor. Theres some great character dialogue and some pretty incredible speeches
I was an army officer for 10 years, and I’ve always thought that Colonel Nicholson get something of a bad review. There is quite a lot to admire about his character. He is a gentlemanly officer, maybe more well suited to an older time, though also perhaps a time that never existed at all. Some characteristics that recommend him would be his unyielding will, his military bearing and gentlemanly manner, his rationality, even though he sometimes comes to unusual conclusions, and even his desire to make the best bridge comes from some idealized view he has of himself and his peers-the British military. Pride is a military value to a certain degree. Though most European countries as well as America teach their soldiers that it’s the duty of a prisoner of war to escape and never stop trying to escape, the discussion they have in which he points out that their entire unit was ordered to surrender, thus casting doubt on the correct course, came across as very plausible. Anyway, I’m not a Nicholson apologist, but I do think he was a good soldier in his own way. He wasn’t cowardly or stupid. He just lost sight of the full scope of his duty. it reminds me of the saying "rectitude carried to excess hardens into stiffness". I hope I’m making some kind of sense. I’ve seen this movie three times and I love it, but I always find myself admiring Nicholson from certain angles. Something makes one want to root for the ideal gentleman officer. each of his decisions misses the mark, but there’s always something correct about his reasoning. With the bridge, he wants to show British ingenuity and work ethic. He wants his men to not become demoralized, but rather to stay proud. These are not bad things by themselves. they only become bad when taken as part of the full scope of his duty. though at the end, when he tries to stop it from being destroyed, it’s clear he’s become kind of insane. Though again, I could see that happening to a prisoner who after putting their mind into a project them gets attached to it.
Robert de Niro and gérard Depardieu ??!! How? When? Who? Too many questions!!
That reaches levels of awesomeness never seen before!!
Spot on. Kwai brings the incongruities of human nature to the fore of a war themed film. It's human nature that causes conflict moreso than the usually defined 'causes' of war.
Love your channel! Can't believe I've only just found it. Keep up the great work!
I wish the names of all the movies featured here were listed somewhere
Bridge on the River Kwai is amazing. Love your videos.
Movies have gotten worse in general, but there are still some incredible newer films like 1917.
The Bridge on the River Kwai is one of my favorite movies even though it came out nearly 20 years before I was born.
I honestly don’t get this recent “it’s surprising you like movies before your generation” mentality
there are a lot of bad movies now and some good movies,just like before
Great analysis - and I think Alec Guinness leads an exceptional cast of fantastic actors. But Casablanca is still the greatest film to deliver a message.
The sound editing on that morning gives me goosebumps.
The commentary on war being empty and people going against their nature where characters are dumb playing by the rules and some to poke at their dumbness. It is utterly pointless and thats show not tell. It took me a while to get the picture. Thank you. If i think i got it wrong. Liked and subbed😊
As far as political “message” movies go, I have always had a soft spot for Lena Wertmuller, Frank Capra, and Gillo Pontecorvo. Hands over the City, and the Organizer are also pretty great.
Well, but Lina Wertmuller and Gillo Pontecorvo's films were EXPLICITLY pollitical. Politics has a central role in the stories and the characters.
@@Laurelin70 Yes, that why I said as far as political movies go…
The unfortunate omission from the Bridge on the River Kwai is that the Geneva convention was never required to be applied to Japanese soldiers, and hence Japan did not ratify it. Which would have explained the actions of Saito a little better.
WRONG. Total lie, or false excuse from Japanese propaganda. Show me where it says it didn't apply to Japanese soldiers.
Still, even when not protected because Japan didn't ratify it, no Japanese POWs died in the Allied camps while 100,000 Allied POWs died being forced to build that "Death Railway" which the Bridge over the River Kwai was part of. Moviewise is dumb, thinking "war is pointless" is some deep wisdom, because that's false. It's like he doesn't know the Japanese were INVADING the place where it takes place. *Every Japanese dead here is a local civilian family rescued from being raped to death.* After killing 2 million in Vietnam. After 25 million in Capitalist China. After communizing these places just like the Nazi's destruction of Eastern Europe easily communized it right afterwards.
Although, Moviewise is actually smarter in one area, than most dumb folks who watched that film thinking Nicholson was in the right. A fascist military funded by 500,000 Japanese girls sold as Karayuki-san sex slaves overseas during the Meiji Era alone _(altho the term "Karayuki-san" meaning "Miss Gone to China" was coined in 1800s, the tradition goes back to 1500s as can be seen in Hideyoshi's missive with Luis Frois, who also witnessed Mabiki when Japanese mothers find they cannot afford to raise children, they kneel on their throats, which later 1800s scholar Nobuhiro Satou gives specific numbers per region and concludes 1/3 of Japanese households kill a baby each year, due to 60-80% tax rates per region),_ then 500,000 according to Molemans' research, mostly foreign girls as "comfort women" later to raise morale of troops, must be stopped. War is not pointless.
Too bad Moviewise didn't make a comparison to The Great Escape where the British Officers in a prison camp run by the Luftwaffe (non specific camp, and Luftwaffe had the elite and the most cultured so it makes sense why that camp was lenient) explicitly said it is a soldier's duty to do all he can to escape so he can disrupt the enemy from behind the lines, even if they get caught anyway they were able to force the enemy to waste manpower they could've used on the frontlines during that time.
Although this movie makes no sense: where are the gleeful Japanese bayoneting downed men for fun, katana decapitations from officers etc? Even if Japan did sign but not ratified the Geneva convention, no Japanese POWs were killed in Allied camps while just with this Burma "Death" Railway alone, 100,000 Allied POWs died.
But Japanese soldier with photo of families? So what? It's like the millions of ppl those Japanese soldiers gasbombed and germbombed (Even Hitler repeatedly said, Germans must NEVER use WMDs in war, not even for defense) and scheduling the extension of WMD bombing from Asia to also America by September of 1945 (Operation Cherry Blossoms at Night) to buy time to finish their 2 Japanese nukes, they killed 30 million in WW2 alone, not counting for decades of nonstop invasions before this, don't count as people? Again, I repeat, every Japanese invader dead is another family saved/avenged so that this will never repeat again. Not killing them is what enabled them to come all the way to Southeast Asia in the first place!
Eric Lomax, a survivor of a Japanese prison labor camp forced to build the "Death Railway" himself wrote an autobiography "The Railway Man" and criticized the Bridge over the River Kwai, because there is no way there'd be POWs that fat building the Death Railway.
Saito himself though, had the least amount of courtesy here because he graduated from an English college, iirc. Still a nice officer in the building of a railway that killed 100,000 Allied POWs makes no sense. He has no business being here. It's like having some background story to explain why these particular Auschwitz wardens were 10x nicer than reality. Gives the wrong image.
Japan's response to America's embargo on Oil exports that was fueling their nonstop war machine, was not to stop warmongering, but to invade more. Indonesia was invaded for its oil fields, to be precise. Vietnam for its grain. Every nation in Asia communized or half-communized and has been forced to bleed money on active military expenses instead of economic development, was due to Japanese.
Also, Japan funded communists like Lenin, Plekhanov, Kropotkin, Gorky etc. through their embassy that ran from Russia to Switzerland once Japan started the war on Capitalist Russia without declaration of war, as per foul Japanese tradition. (Did you know it took 1 whole week after signing the declarations of war just for the 1st battle to happen in WW1? And that's after working out the date to get all parties though to be involved in the same room, so everyone knew the war was coming long before that.)
*NO WONDER 1 BILLION ASIANS CHEERED FOR THOSE NUKES IN 1945.* It's like how Star Wars ended with 2 big explosions in the Empire and much cheering from the galaxy. Even if Japan tries to hide 1/3 of casualties of the nukes were forced laborers just like the ones dying to build the Burma "Death" Railway, forced to make munitions for the fascists. Also Hiroshima was the poison gas bomb production hub of Japan.
Look at previous generations like Kodaira Yoshio in the 1920s, what did this NAVYMAN do? He said with his comrades he would land and go raiding coastal towns and violating little girls in front of their parents and kill them all afterwards. His generation was addicted to such war crimes for years, and in his case, he kept doing that right into postwar.
These are the "Japanese civilians." Veteran rapists, sex slavers, butchers of civilians, and cannibals, thieves, looters, pillagers whose economy was built on robbing others and communizing them. Why do you think Japanese economy failed and in 1945 had a debt to GDP ratio of 200% which they resolved by confiscating money right out of people's bank accounts? Without the trillions of dollars over the Cold War from USA, they would've starved. And this also explains that once the Cold War was over in the 90s, it's no coincidence they've been suffering a recession they call "The Lost 30 Years"
The only reason China is communist is because Japan allied with the CCP and avoided fighting each other while the Capitalists bled. Fan Hannian was the communist liaison invited to the Shanghai Iwai Consulate and trade intel on Capitalist Chinese forces. Then in May of 1945, the CCP attacked from the West, the Japanese continued the 8 year offensive from the East, and squeezed the gasbombed/germbombed Capitalist Chinese in an impossible two-front war. There is virtually no country in history that survived a two-front war on land, mind you.
Mao Zedong thanked General Saburou Endou in 1956 for the fascist Japanese saving him and the CCP back in WW2. He also thanked Japan when two Japanese socialists visited in 1964. He also thanked Japan for saving the CCP to PM Kakuei Tanaka in 1972, right after Japan became the 1st nation to sever ties with Capitalist China (Taiwan) and only recognize the CCP as the legitimate government of China with full UN Security Council veto powers. Japan even used the police to physically kick out the Capitalists in the embassy and escort the Communists in there. Then for the next 10 years, the US Tech and Trillions of tax dollars meant for the Asian version of the Marshall plan if Japan didn't communize it all first, wouldn't be enough for Japan who was not asked by America for a single penny on war reparations, and instead would do things like send corporate spies like Jun Naruse from Hitachi to steal US Semiconductor tech (he got caught by the FBI), or steal things like Walkman from Andreas Pavel and use the illegal gains to sue the inventor to bankruptcy to claim Japan made all these things through their own genius (even hiring thugs to raid Pavel's lawyers offices to steal legal documents).
Or even, in the 80s, be caught selling to the USSR some US tech specifically listed as a security risk that must never fall to Soviet hands through the CoCOM accords, and narrowing the gap between US and USSR tech, leading to the 80s rise in military spending at the cost of social programs. Lefties blame all that on Reagan, when they really should go look for politicians hammering Japanese electronic products out in front of Congress under signs saying "The Capitalists themselves because they are so greedy will sell us the rope with which to hang them."
By the way the Daihon'ei high command also didn't care about the nuclear casualties, numbers like that by 1945 was a dime a dozen anyway. It is fact that when they heard the reports they hardly gave pause, and went back to arguing with each other on how to trick Americans into a peace treaty that returns to Japan all the invaded islands liberated by America. Same thing with Nagasaki. The only thing that forced them into surrender was the report that Soviets liberated Manchuria, and were poised to land on northern Japan. They feared being split up like German was back in June of 1945. So that's why it took more than 0 nukes convince them to surrender... only to America and not USSR.
You think a government cared when it told ppl like on Saipan and Okinawa that they must kill all their children and then commit suicide, because Americans will eat their babies and violate them, when the reason they did this was to save face, by not letting anyone be liberated and realizing they've been told lies by the fascist government all along? If you go read how much the Okinawans hate them for making them kill their own children (while it turns out Japan was the one that conscripted schoolgirls from Okinawa and violated them like the Himeyuri girls) and centuries of 90% tax rates by samurai, you will see the truth.
Did you know after cannibalizing the American POWs on Chichijima Island, Japan claimed that those men were killed by their own American bombers because they bomb too much, and when it was found out, they lucked out because the press on their cannibalism died when the victims said they didn't want their boys' terrible fates to be widely known, so Japan could hide their true nature even better?
I laugh when naive weebs think the tale of the Japanese who didn't surrender is supposed to be some heroic message. Not even Japanese believed their own propaganda by 1945, simply because they were the very men in the situation of being forced to throw their lives away... yet weebs still worship those tales. Kamikazes? It's been told multiple times even fascist pilots said they never saw anyone who liked blowing themselves up, it was a stupid waste of men.
Not that anyone high up in the Daihon'ei high command cared, it was the National Shinto religion that brainwashed that to go ALLAHU AKBAR by planes, boats, submarines, manned torpedos, manned antitank mines, diving suits, etc. all designed ground-up to have no other weapon but the suicide bomb, will bring them to be worshiped as minor gods alongside the One True God Emperor Hirohito. And Zen Buddhists, (read, Zen at War) brainwashed ppl that to genocide other races is to liberate them for nirvana, and that blowing yourself up will bring them to Pure Land Zen Paradise.
You know why the soldiers didn't surrender? Because they were sure that they would be tried and executed for the tons of war crimes they were told was just normal to do because their fathers and grandfathers did as well. They holed up in island caves and split into cliques and ate each other once the natives were happily liberated by American forces. Some real life Lord of the Flies shit. What "Samurai Honor" is there in that? That's just propaganda. (The real bloodthirsty samurai of 1500s back when they were selling many girls to foreign slavers for muskets to kill each other better, were backstabbers who justified their betrayals as "pragmatic," like Harukata Sue betraying his master Yoshitaka Ouchi, or Mitsuhide Akechi killing his lord Nobunaga Oda. These violent samurai would laugh at 1700s Confucianized ones "dying for their lord" ).
It's like Wehrmacht surrendered to US Forces far easier than the Waffen SS did, who knew they were going to be executed anyway for committing way more war crimes than Wehrmacht. Except in the case of Japan, imagine if the entire military was like the Waffen SS.
Also, they already saw their families get lynched by Japanese civilian mobs if they ever surrendered, for raising a cowardly "hikokumin (non-national)" son. Some soldiers kept journals. Well they didn't have a care for the underage girls they raped in military brothels, with *80-MAN DAILY RAPE QUOTAS.* Those There are even records of Japanese trying to claim no war crime happened because they have here a "contract" signed by a 10-year old... forcing kids to sign contracts they have no idea what it is about (the contract says they will only "comfort" the soldiers, nothing about giving them sex, which is what really happened. It's 10x worse than "contracts" signed by illiterate Pressganged sailors)
@@CrabTastingMan I'm surprised your comment hasn't been pounced upon yet by the mob who copy-paste walls and walls auto-translated text referring you to 12 different blogsites about how it's all the Koreans' fault.
"Madness!" "Madness!" How could you leave that out? To hll with Laurence and Arabia, River Kwai is Lean's greatest.
Great analysis. Like all your analyses. Live forever, Moviewise.
I just watched China Gate. A 50s? movie. With Nat King Cole as a soldier in Indochina. A decent role in a decent movie. A decent message. So subtle that you didn't notice it. So there nevertheless.
So what about Come and See by Elem Klimov? Best antiwar film imo but what's your opinion?
It's from the pov of a child soldier
I have Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia both on blu-ray and I love them!
Good choices.
My eyes roll especially at the preached message I strongly agree with.
Movies need to say something to resonate otherwise they are soon forgotten like Fast and the Furious. They must not lecture or force the message, though. Best to leave out speeches as much as possible too (which is why I don't like Sorkin that much)
forgotten ? Furious is about FAMILY nothing in this world is more important than FAMILY that is a message everyone should that it's all about FAMILY
"I know authors who use subtext. And they're all COWARDS!"
- Garth Marenghi
Jokes aside. I usually have no real problem with blunt messaging. Sometimes I even enjoy it.
Lazy storytelling though. Me hate that. Preach all ye want. But do not waste my time, mr filmmakers.
Makes me want to watch TBORK again. Jolly good show!
Ok thanks man now I can't stop watching your videos before my exam
Thank YOU for MAKING IT SO AMAZING
Love your vids and love your analysis, but I have to respectfully disagree in relation to war movies, which can be very definitely divided into pro and anti-war.
For me the difference between the two is not the degree of suffering or bloodshed depicted, but in fact lies in two elements: motivation and outcomes.
In a pro war movie the motivation behind the actions depicted, (certainly by "our" side), are positive; oppose oppression, defend freedom, defend the homeland etc etc. Or they can be more small-scale; get your men out alive, complete the mission so someone else doesn't have to. And secondly, the actions achieve positive outcomes; the battle is won, freedom is defended, oppression vanquished.
So the key elements of a pro-war movie are that the protagonists are motivated by worthy goals, and their actions and sacrifice are ultimately meaningful and have a point. For example: 1989's Glory, They Were Not Divided, The Way Ahead, Back to Baatan, Band of Brothers
In contrast, the main characters in an anti-war movie are motivated by selfish and negative instincts; take for example Paths of Glory; the General is motivated by a desire for promotion, the Lieutenant by a desire to cover up his own cowardice, and so the sacrifice of their men has no meaning or higher purpose. And again the outcomes are futile; the blood and death achieves nothing.
My favourite example is the closing scene of Bridge at Remagen. All the anti-war elements are there; the men are being pushed across the bridge because the Major wants to look good in front of his superiors, but the final scene is the clincher, when the closing credits announce that the bridge fell down mere days after it was captured, suggesting that all that sacrifice and death was for nothing. (This is not historically correct, by the way; the capture of the bridge was of vital importance).
So for me movies can very definitely be pro or anti war, and the difference is not bloodshed or death, it is the purpose of that bloodshed, and the motivation of those directing it.
Absolutely brilliant video dude, you're great!
Keep up the good work. You have another subscriber.
I must say however that Charlie Chaplin's speech on The Great Dictator was very inspiring.
Good Show! Jolly Good Show, Moviewise!
This is my favorite channel. 😂
This is a truly great review that does credit to a truly great movie.
Ok, if I hadn’t already subbed, holy cow, hearing Helmuth von Moltke referenced in a movie video would’ve done it. ❤❤❤❤👍👍👍👍👍
This is so damn good. This whole channel is so damn good!
KWAI is one of the greatest films ever made. I enjoyed your thoughts here.
Curious what you think about the film 'NETWORK'.
Cheers.
Two movies I recommend for an effective message - "PLATOON" & "RUSH"
It sucks when a movie's narrative grinds to a halt so a character can preach something that's important to the writer. Characters don't even sound like characters anymore when this happens, they sound like the edgy opinionated provacative smug dipshit I had in every college class. Today's writers are short on life experiences - have any of them fought in a war? suffered any hardship or unique molding experience? or are they the same as the next spoiled film-school liberal-arts major - and just want to hear their opinions, often laden with emotion, coming out of every characters mouths?
Is the problem the writers? Or is the problem the studios? Or is the problem social media backlash? Or is it the audience? If good writing is valued, good screenplays will be chosen and more good writers will be successful leading to better writing. The source of the problem is not the writers.
It still baffles me how movies like Don't Look Up can be nominated for best screenplay at the major awards. There's no subtlety at all in it. It's like you are constantly bombarded with pies in your face and it's all the same insipid flavour. These kind of movies are not bad because of the message; they are bad because the way they deliver it.
The message of your movie should exist in the background of the frame and in the subtext of the dialogue.
cross cutting with the barf scene, genius
I'm late to the party, but I need to point out that you bought the message that racism equals a Southern accent. Sadly, that's almost universal in American entertainment. The story could be set in the middle of Los Angeles or New York, and the character could be from Chicago or Detroit, but if they are a racist, there is a 90% chance they develop a Southern twang, even if it is subtle. The television show Law and Order is particularly egregious in this matter. The most virulently racist Americans I have ever met have been from northeastern cities.
"The Burmese Harp" by KON ICHIKAWA 1956 is an excellent anti-war film
Excellent analysis. You're points are valid, but they are dwarfed by the sheer amount of pro-war films, which aren't very subtle in their preaching.
Paths of Glory is another great example of the “message” done right.
I love how if two female superheroes help each other the movie is now woke, but everything that happened in Barbie is empowerment.
Merry Christmas Mister Lawrence is very good.
This video clearly came out before Barbie, the movie which most efficiently delivers a message. Smart, subtle and unexpected.
I hope you're being ironic because Barbie is sheer, unadulterated woke propaganda
@@CrazyMazapan I think you already know that at least half the population HATES woke stuff right? Let’s face it, many of UA-cam’s most popular channels make all their money explicitly hating on “Woke Culture”. Hating “Woke” is a better business model that loving on it. So given that’s the case, why did Barbie make 1.4 billion dollars already? Obviously people found it smart, subtle and unexpected, not offensively ”woke”. You can’t make 1.4 billion dollars by only appealing to wokesters. You can’t make 1.4 billion dollars by only appealing to a segment of the audience. That would be impossible. (I’m not saying it’s Bridge on the River Kwai level of classic quality though).
@petercornwell5880 😂😂😂 No one came to Barbie for its message. They came to Barbie because of all the hot pink in it. Remember girls just want to have fun. That is all.
@@beinteractive3207 Yeah and Robocop wasn't political either! 😂
@petercornwell5880 No one came to see Robcop because of its political message. They came to see Robocop because of all the violence. Remember, boys, what you gonna do what you gonna do when they come for you. That is all.
Great analysis!
I have a sentimental favorite, but there are so many others...
2:00 clip from what film ?
Great video, dude!
Keep it up!
This channel is the bomb.
Wait. Wasn't the train full of Allied prisoners? I thought the was a line about the prisoners being moved to another camp and as a reward for their work, they got to travel on that train.
A hint might be that they were backlisted. Like today's outspoken characters they are shadow banned or de platformed, imprisoned or assassinated. If you sideline your best writers and thinkers, that's how you end up with rubbish endlessly. And it's considered double plus good.
He wasn't blacklisted for being 'outspoken', but because he had been a member of the Communist Party as a young man and was unfortunate enough to live in the McCarthy era. Kind of ironic that you should invoke Orwell lol.
Joke's on you, Moviewise, preaching is a valid way of delivering messages and has millennia of tradition. Just because you have no love for the ancient art of oratory, doesn't make "preaching" a bad thing.
Also, just because you have a fixation with subtlety doesn't mean directness has no value.
Sure. Direct on the nose preachy messaging seems to have been doing really well recently, huh? That bubble of yours must be real comfy, huh? 🤣🤣
@@Iron-Bridge Sarcasm isn't nourishing. Try sincerity.
top notch commentary thank you