I saw it this past weekend at the Rotterdam Film Festival, and .... wow. It was very British though, what with all the "went over the top, sure was hell" understatement and repression.
Having been to Tyne Cot and Vimy and Passchendaele and Thiepval and Amiens and Essex Farm and many of the other battlefields and cemeteries of the Ypres Salient and the Somme, all I could think of seeing those smiling faces was "how much longer did you live after this shot was taken?" Devastating.
And the teeth. Really brought home how much of a class thing war is. The ones giving the orders are healthy, sitting safely behind the line; the ones doing the dying are the kids who grew up malnourished and used their toothbrush to polish their buttons because they had no idea what it was for.
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regna
(no subject)
Date: 2019-02-07 09:45 pm (UTC)Having been to Tyne Cot and Vimy and Passchendaele and Thiepval and Amiens and Essex Farm and many of the other battlefields and cemeteries of the Ypres Salient and the Somme, all I could think of seeing those smiling faces was "how much longer did you live after this shot was taken?" Devastating.
And the teeth. Really brought home how much of a class thing war is. The ones giving the orders are healthy, sitting safely behind the line; the ones doing the dying are the kids who grew up malnourished and used their toothbrush to polish their buttons because they had no idea what it was for.