About Action
Post 112:
I don’t do as many of these as I’d like, mostly because criticizing other work seems more than a little unearned. That said, I try to do a review every now and again, so I’ll offer one up.
Last night I took a break from writing to cast my eyes on Hacksaw Ridge. Very good story. I wasn’t particularly impressed with the look of it, battle choreography, etc., but the main character and his family were inspiring enough to carry the movie.
It’s a war film. Kind of old-fashioned, which I liked, though it tended toward hokey at times, far as dialogue. Very violent, but thank God, there are some bigger themes underneath.
It’s amazing how humanity uses action (shooting, running, screaming, fighting) to demonstrate ideas that actually at a step's remove have little to do with external conflict. This is the all too predictable part where I take something I just saw and it makes me think about the larger art of storytelling.
War stories are compelling. The Iliad is what we base a lot of our tales and heroes on, even if we don’t want to. It is completely about a frigging war.
But it’s not.
Like Hacksaw Ridge, it’s about a few very interesting characters set inside the maelstrom of war. I’m sure it can be argued, but the battles aren’t actually what matters. It’s the circumstances that bring the characters to the front, the baggage they carry and the things they’ve left behind before going into the breech—that’s what it’s about and what makes it interesting.
Hacksaw does what a good story should do: It makes you care about the people involved. It’s not the Iliad, but come on, who are we kidding? I think that puppy had like three hundred years of revisions. For a couple of dudes with some paper and a few cameras, I’d say the movie did a pretty nice job. And yes. Something positive about my country of origin isn’t the worst thing in the world. Love the critiques, but tossing us a bone every now and then can’t hurt. Later animals. See you after.
