Peter Bart: War Is Hell. Onscreen, It’s Also A Blur
deadline.comThe Israeli-Gaza morass this week seemed to defy coherent media coverage, reminding me of critic David Thomson’s conclusion about Hollywood war movies and how they “used to celebrate courage, not confusion.” Thomson’s new book, The Fatal Alliance, deals with the history of the war movie from Gallipoli to Saving Private Ryan, guiding readers from “war is hell” to “war is a blur.” The war movie once constituted a reliable genre product for Hollywood, along with the Western and the musical.
To be sure, Israel-Gaza is a tragedy of enormous and dramatic proportions, as symbolized by its chaotic cross-cutting from drones to tunnels.
From Paths of Glory to Dunkirk, war movies once set forth a structure and pathos to guide audiences through the nihilism of combat.
Thomson reminds us of the pageantry of the knights on horseback in Olivier’s Henry V, the churning helicopters in Apocalypse Now or the mayhem of Mogadishu in Black Hawk Down.
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