Reply #66: I agree

[FedUpWithIt All]

It was brutal to watch and THAT is IMHO what made it so powerful for the intent you stated.

I tend to archive real and painful images of Iraq and other things on my computer. One thing i have noticed is that those who call for war, blood, revenge do NOT have the stomach to see the result of their "actions". I know people who suggest that, "We should just turn Iraq into glass and be done with it." If you ask these same people to view images from bushwar they will aggressively refuse. Why? Because it is easy to spew violent opinions when you can shut out the reality of the suffering and pain wrought from that violence.

I saw the Patriot. The main character is ashamed of his own violent past and there is a visible struggle about allowing his children to see a side of him that he tried to long ago "put away". The character is portrayed as a sort of pacifist (haunted by demons of his past activities) forced into the hated violence through a need for defense. Do i agree with this choice by the character? Does it matter? The film made me think about it. To me that is something film should do.

I will be seeing Apocolypto. I like to form my own opinions about these things. I suspect i will come away shocked and disgusted at the harm people do to others. I do not think i will come away hating the Mayan people as i did not come away from Passion thinking "Jews are bad" or the Patriot thinking "the English are all murderers". I realize that there are simply a few people from every group known to man who are "capable" of doing harm to others. This is human nature. My anger is at those few people. It is also the nature of film to portray a struggle against this by the many (again from any group known to man) people who do not have it in their natures to desire harm to others.

There is a lot of violence in film and other forms of entertainment today. Some show the violence in a way that depicts it as entertaining and sometimes even gratifying. Others show it as a destructive thing and make you come away with a sadness about what you have seen perpetrated.

Braveheart, Passion, Patriot all left me with a feeling of sadness and contemplating the far reaching consequences of violence. Nobody is left unscathed by it.

Just my take.