The Dignity of a War Movie

Maybe it’s a little bit embarrassed to acknowledge that I watched Pearl Harbor only a week ago, but indeed I did. The movie combined personal affections with grand narration which could definitely be regarded as one of the most classic Hollywood romantic epic movies, though seen from today it’s a little bit kind of cliché. Anyway, besides the heartbreaking romance and the spectacular exploding war theme, there are some things that have been in my mind all the while these days and I just can』t wait to pour them out.
As far as I am considered, it’s not the incandescent love between the hero and heroine, nor the magnificent war scene which made me feel so touched, but the way the director disposed the Japanese enemies.
It’s just really unbelievable how the scenarist described the hostile Japanese troops and their commanders who attempted to sneak raid Pearl Harbor. Surprisingly, without smear, without uglifing, the filmmakers applied a whole different way to depict their enemies------the real humanistic way. In the film, the Japanese aircraftsmen were also loyal to their country and loved their families far beyond the sea, just as the American soldiers did. The bombing thing was only an inevitable mission, not caused by the evil sin deep inside their soul. Still they gave up their lives for the country they loved. And the commander, who is still considered as a most evil person in China, was demonstrated as a decisive, patriotic and wily militarist, who had conceive several brilliant ideas to inflict heavy loss on America.
Do American hate Japanese less than we do? Hardly so, Japan pretended to have a peace negotiation with America, but conspired to sneak attack the best naval force of the United States, the Pacific Fleet, which rest peacefully in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The bombing attack cost America thousands of lives and trillions of dollars as well as the most important navy force of the Pacific Ocean. Americans and Japanese fell out and became sworn enemies within one night.
I feel ashamed that I used to claimed that The Flowers of War is a great epic movie. Now I want to withdraw those words so badly. Yes, both movies extolled peace, love, generosity, integrity, patriotism, the greatness of humanity. But what do our war movies lack of? Objectivism towards a war, respects to our once enemies, devotion to the facts of history. We smear our enemy in order to show our righteous. We made our enemies worse than beasts just to stand out our humanism. It should be the common sense of everyone that the cause of war is not simply the evil beneath their national spirit, but a series of inevitable multiple factors in the development of human beings. War costs lives. Still peace is what wars fight for. The greatness of humanity is not foiled by evil, but the tribulation we』ve both gone through and the pain and sorrow we』ve both been healing till today.
War movie has its obligation, not to arouse hatred once again among people, but to commemorate the predecessors who gave up their lives to gain our current peaceful life, to alert us that happiness does not come so easy and don』t let history repeat, and to make us treasure nowadays better. This is the dignity of a war movie.