I appreciate that independent film-making has become such an active field, with so many short films on military history finding their way to public display.
But on the other side, I find most of them to be rather … I don't know … just not really worth watching.
When I put it together they just seem to be a modern middle-class collector's view of WW2. Showing off collections of mint-condition memorabilia in an all-to-predictable story.
For one, I find far too many told from the German point of view. I don't object to good films from a German point of view. But it just feels like too many of these independent shorts are such. And I feel it is in part due to issue two.
The second issue for me is that they seem to almost always follow some sort of unwritten formula, that I might describe as a 15-20 minute Haiku. I am a fan of Haiku. But Haiku works because it is so short. You don't spend 10+ minutes building a case before you deliver a surprise punch line at the end. You get 2 lines to set it up, and 1 line to deliver, and you're done and on to the next one. With these films they spend 12 to 15 minutes developing the scene for a 2 or 3 minute moral dilemma, and then try to surprise you with the way it turns at the end. It's not that such a formula can't work, but if EVERYONE follows the same formula, it just doesn't work as well the third, fifth, or twenty-seventh time you see it applied. In 15 minutes I just don't make enough of an emotional investment to really care about the dilemma, and I'm never surprised at the end.
I mean can't some indi film maker come up with a different formula that fits in 15 – 18 minutes?
Oh, and third, if you're going to try to tell a WW2 story from the German point of view, and particularly it's a late war story, please please PLEASE go get a make-up kit and make the soldiers' faces look at least a little hollowed and disheveled. And find a few re-enactors who are thin and wiry looking to play some of the poor schnooks on the front line. While you're at it see if you can find a few who don't mind having their uniforms covered with mud and dirt … maybe even torn or frayed a bit … for the sake of the film. Because the typical Landser (or frontovic, or grunt) in 1944 was not freshly washed, clean shaven, well fed and in a new and crisply pressed uniform as he lay in the dirt waiting for the next attack. At least not to my readings…
-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)
