I’ve just watched ‘Schindler’s List’, possibly one of the most moving movies that I’ve ever seen. There’s a small selection of cinema which I will watch not to be entertained, but reminded, of we as a human race, and our capabilities of atrocities towards one another.
When I say that there are movies that do not entertain, I am correct. Quite often we see war movies as glamourising the art of death-dealing, yet the pain and suffering that this causes shows us that we are really human, emotional beings. Of these films, I have a few that I hold dear to my heart, not because of the violence they portray, but the essence of what we are as humans, and how flawed we can be:

• Schindler’s List - already mentioned, the systematic extermination of the Jews, recreated in black & white film, and how one man’s profiteering bought him the ability to give several hundred people hope at life after WW2. Not entertaining because it shows a brutal regime, the abuse of Jews having to sift through the remains of their brethren, having to bury their friends, subjected to torment and terror.
• The Killing Fields - based around the story of Dith Pran and Sydney Schanberg, a journalist for the New York Times, with Dith Pran as his ever able assistant. This story tells of the genocide that happened in the killing fields of Cambodia. Following both stories of Dith Pran’s captivity and Sydney Schenberg’s efforts to locate Dith, this movie moves towards an intensely emotional reunion. The horror of the killing fields is quite accurately portrayed, and very realistic. This movie, again, is not entertaining.
• Brotherhood (Taegugki) - this is definitely not one for the weak hearted. This film centres around two brothers drawn into the Korean war, a war which has never been resolved, with only a ceasefire holding place. Considering the tense situation between both countries, it was impressive that Korea’s largest budget live-action film could out-do ‘Saving Private Ryan’. And the reason this is mentioned? Saving Private Ryan, despite it’s brutal depiction of war, somehow glamourised it. Brotherhood rips any glamour of war to shreds. And your emotional state with it. This film has emptied boxes of tissues from me, merely because of the base nature that mankind can stoop to when faced with these decisions: kill or be killed. This film does not entertain, but informs, due to the socio/political nature of Korea (the scene where the girlfriend is taken to be executed merely because she attended a communist rally being a point), but also lifts the lid on how families cope during these times of war. One review stated,
  

  “Most positive reviews cite its unflinching portrayal of war and praise it for showing the brutality of both the North and South Korean armies.”

  Not a bad statement coming from a South Korean film.

So that’s my immediate selection. A series of films which do not entertain, but inform us of historical events, that show us facets of human nature we choose to hide under a layer of glamour. These films, being war films, when people get shot, they die. There are consquences. Scenes like where the Jews were lined up to save ammunition make this even more poignant. There is no glamour here. No dressing up, no ‘get up and carry on’. It’s a depiction of human life. And death.

Yes this post has been morbid. But there is something good about all this. People do live. The Schindler survivors. Sydney and Dith. I won’t mention the last, it would be a spoiler. The quintessential point of mankind is hope. Like the Architect states in the Matrix : Reloaded. Hope.

Hope is what we have to drive us on. But as in 1 Corinthians 13:13:

And now faith, hope, love, these three remain; but the greatest of these is love.

Nuff said. Mainly because I’m tired. And it’s late.