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I just saw it. jesus. it's one of those well written good acting brilliant direction wonderful cinematography I couldn't possibly recommend you see it films.
I'm not sure how I'm going to sleep tonight.
Christina,
As someone who doesn't live in the USA, I had a different perspective on the movie. I felt it showed only the American side of the suffering. Sure, war is hell, but from watching this movie, you'd never even know that 1000+ Somalis died on that day. Is their loss so trivial?
The normally funny Mr. Cranky nails it in his review of the movie. That pretty much echoes my thoughts too.
As some one who does live in the USA, I was also horrified by the somalians who were mowed down as if they were chattle, while each american life was held sacred. To think such wholesale death can happen in these "enlightened " times breaks my heart. And the ending notes hit me hardest--- i read that 1000 somalians died that day to 17 americans... I could only think "what weapons we have. What horrors we can perpatrate." Our price was small that day, though horrible also. Our emotions were quite the same, I suspect.
I get so frustrated with people who think because I live in the US i must have the same point fo view as all america.. I get that when I'm in europe whihc I am often because of my french husband. God, if I am asked to explain George Bush to one more in-law I think I'll scream.
Why would living in the states keep me from weeping over the African families mowed down in the hundreds in the film, the mother weeping over her husband, the schoolchildren cowering as bullets wizzed above. Can I only feel for the American soliders because I live in the USA? Black Hawk Down was great because it showed war and made you realize the price is too great-- and it told it in a way that even the conservative right in America could feel. At least that's what I thought. I hoped. I hoped someone might get the message war is too expensive.
Maybe I read it differently. I cried and cried that night, and had nightmares... those children-- the american boys, sure, but the little children of the school, on the street who know only this world of bullets in the air.
Black Hawk Down told one story and told it brilliantly. I personally think it's wrong to criticize it because you think it told the wrong story.
Well, I don't do well with this stuff. That's why I don't usually write about it.
Actually Christina, my comments were directed completely towards the movie's assumptions, and not your feelings, which I had no way of gauging.
I'm not criticising it because it told the wrong story, but because I think it didn't tell the complete story. It showed only one side - that of the American suffering. Ridley Scott didn't seem to consider the Somali suffering as anything more than a bit of introductory text and a line at the end of the movie. This is about Scott, not you.
but that wasnt' the story he set out to tell... he set out to tell the story of the americans who had this experience. From their point of view. and he did a good job. if he told it from both sides (liek Altman's wonderful gosford park) it woudl have been a different movie. and it might have been good, but that wasn't the story he set out to tell. I felt that as the sodiers fell into the school, as we saw the wife fall upon the husband the soldiers just shot we caught the glimpses of the horror the soldiers particpated in, in the way the soldiers woudl have seen them.
It's a single point of view, not an omniciant one, with the price that comes with it. it's still a great film, just not the most PC-world-view one.
I took the comments personally because you wrote "as someone who doesn't live in the US" which I took to mean me, since Ridley Scott lives in britain (he's british). I hope my comments above have clarified my thoughts on Scott and the act of makign art. You tell the story you set out to tell, and your ultimate loyalty is to that story, not to politics (PC or otherwise)