The greatest generation

It's the 60th anniversary of V-E day. To counteract my shithead president's latest finding-new-ways-to-piss-off-the-world speeches about it, I will recommend a film: The Big Red One - The Reconstruction. That subtitle makes it sound like a franchise sequel, but it's actually the repaired version of Sam Fuller's WWII epic that was released last year. The first, studio-butchered version of the film came out in 1980; this one used Fuller's notes and archived footage to create something much closer to his original vision.

I saw it at the Brattle last year. I want to call it "Forest Gump does WWII", which makes it sound awful, but it isn't. The film follows four GIs (one of whom is Mark Hammil failing to break out of typecast) and their grizzled captain (an amazing performance by Lee Marvin, a real-life WWII veteran) as they muddle through the war together. Following orders from commanders they never see (nor do we), they take part in nearly every key battle of the war's western theater.

The real star of the film is the ol' Fog of War. At no time does the unit have any idea what it's actually doing; it's ordered into one place or another, does its business, and awaits further orders. We the audience recognize the significance of their actions, but nobody every tells them about it. V-E day comes and goes and the information takes a while to filter down to them (leading to a tense scene at the end). Their discovery of a Nazi death camp is made all the more horrible by the fact that none of the GIs knew what to expect, and were completely unprepared for what they see. When one of them goes kind of crazy as a result, you want to sympathize for him.

The other moral: war is hell. While the captain is clearly a combatant of the most deadly caliber, the other soldiers are just average fighters. The only reason they survive the whole war together? Dumb luck. Many other soldiers cycle through their unit, most leaving as casualties. In one of the most (very intentionally) igry scenes, one of these unluckies gets a ball blown off by a land mine, and the captain finds the gory organ and winkingly jokes to the soldier -- on the ground and in shock -- that this is why God gave him two. It's a funny scene, and it's also horrible, and the audience has no idea how to react. That's brilliant, as are many other otherworldly scenarios the unit faces, such as delivering a baby in a German tank surrounded by the dead, or liberating an insane asylum.

It's a little heavy-handed in parts (GIANT CRUCIFIX) but absolutely worth seeing. Just remember to see the correct version! (Also, watch for the director's cameo as a newsreel photographer.)