Watched a bit of Shutter Island. Half or so. I knew more less what the movie was going to be like, but as fine as I am with claustrophobic psychological thrillers, the whole mental degradation process of the hero is not for me. I'm not saying I couldn't watch it - by comparissn it's not even very scary - but I probably better not. My brain is ever on the brink of exploring some pretty coocoo regions in my sleep as it is and the nightmares haven't been slacking since the whole book thing. I have stopped watching Criminal Minds, also. Don't want to see Hotch go through the whole Dexter thing. Plus the copy of both - the movie and the series - is so poor that latter isn't really watchable and the former is painful to listen to. As much as the OST was meant to inspire discomfort, pirate download of the whole thing succeeded.
But all in all it's a good film. DiCaprio continues to make the most of his face and frame, twisting it into something not pretty-boy-routine, delivering one of those performances that once again make the viewer think 'I'm so glad it's not me' and Ben Kinsley is always as much a villain as he is a good guy in every production. Director goes for the whole post-war paranoia, almost mocking the whole anti-communist frenzy.. It may have been a bit overdone, though. Music would have probably been enough to let us all know how very troubled the poor man was, and shooting of the Nazi soldiers might have been enough to stress the absurdity (In all that horror he still regrets coming down to their level in that bad moment..), salted down a bit with flash scenes of frozen cadavers, but lengthily and very detailed graphic imagery of the endless unfortunate souls in Dachau was unnecessary. Twist came around full circle, too.
Makes me think... The war. Second world war. Personally I am almost a fan of war (Not to mention Warcraft). I like the existential dynamic of it, the whole creative passion men seldom display otherwise. Nothing gets men more perky than the thought of war. Everybody wants to be the hero and to do that you have to kill some other idiot that's coming at you with the same idiotic intent. After all, since we take it upon ourselves to slaughter every other form of life we meet, from trees, bacteria, rodents, down to deer for sport, it's only natural we once in a while turn upon each-other. Look at Celts. They made war a sexy profession. They'd drink, eat, fuck, party around and when they got fat and bored, they'd go to war. Romans did it also. Everyone did, in fact. We try to impose some synthetic sense of tranquility, crime-less and violence-less state and it's just not holding. Men need to kill. It's a turn-on. I could spend my entire existence sabotaging arms of my fellow combatants or Piček's hunting weekends and still achieve nothing. Perhaps more fundamentally pacifistic person than anyone I know, I am still far from being immune to the urges of my species.
That having been said, there's the WWII. Yes the glorious Pearl Harbor pilots, yes the partisan songs and field hospitals and all the movies with blind soldiers nursed back to the will to live by innocent farm girls..
We went to all sorts of museums and sights during the basic training and I've seen and heard plenty absurdly tragic things, but hey, that's war. You asked for it, expect a few dead. What the fuck did they think will happen? Fight Club? And I realize there have always been slaves and POWs and experiments and whatnot, Japanese side, American side, French side, whatever. The words 'concentration camp' really aren't meant to bring up images of gardens and perky out-door sports. It's where people go to sit out declines of humanity.
These days we have serial killers who can perform unspeakably gruesome acts, often onto the least guilty counterparts. An abused teenager won't go against the abuser, nooo, they'll go against the schoolmates who are happy. Housewives, children, happy married couples.. Sometimes for years without being caught.
But those are sick men. There is nothing righteous about them. Heck, I can even justify the quadruple digits slaughter of Nazi cooperatives in our own forests, often seasoned by tales of mild torture beforehand and similar reaching out. But that was war'n'consequences. Places like Dachau? Auschwitz? My grandmother came out of Auschwitz with arms broken - experimentally - more than a dozen times and she was so starved that when she was fed, along countless others, the 'normal' food (Goulash, I think it was), was too much and all their stomachs gave in and they all died. The starved, beyond-words-destroyed people, masses of people, not soldiers or collaborators, or even Jews, the gay and whatever religion practitioners - in the end it was just that they existed that was in some way offensive or an opportunity for someone to be the Devil in human form. If Lucifer was asked why he would inspire something as indescribable as Nazi camps, he's blink and say: "Me?? Are you kidding? Nazi camps are where I go with my popcorn to watch the pros."
