I don't know if I agree with what all has been said here, but I sort of know what the original poster meant. My grandmother was a nurse in England during WWII and my grandfather was a soldier fighting for the English. My grandmother would sometimes tell me about her experiences during the war, the people she met, the things she saw, the things she did, and I remember finding it odd when she made a comment about it being one of the best times in her life. She, of course, didn't mean that the war was fun or that she enjoyed it, because she lost people she loved in the war, worried about my grandfather off fighting, and faced constant bombings while serving as an army nurse. She explained her comment to me when I was younger by telling me that she had never seen people become so close, people worked together and they appreciated what they had because any one of them could have lost it at a moments notice. It was an awful situation, but it brought people together, and I think in the midst of terrible loss and tragedy, the only way to survive is to think that there is hope. As for the comments about the film with regards to the actions of "Billy" and "Dawn" in various scenes, I don't think this film was made with the intention of telling every story of every person who experienced the war, or with making a watered down version of what most people's experiences were. I thought it was brilliant because it told one little boy's story. Today it seems that we're too concerned with making characters or stories that relate to everyone. We want to include everyone and we lose that personal touch. I think it's refreshing that a film is made every once in awhile that doesn't ask you to say, oh I've had those experiences, or that could be me, because I want to see individuals every so often.
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NoirDamedotcom
18 years ago
xfile1971, get thee to a library and check out Studs Terkel's book "The Good War," an oral history featuring people who lived through WWII. Most of them are American, though some lived through the war in Germany and Japan, as well as fighting overseas. It's a really readable collection - you can just jump in. The gist is that people had all sorts of reactions to the war, including the young and the old. One woman interviewed became a "V-Girl," and for her, the war was mostly about dating lots of young men; for another, it was an opportunity to make money at a munitions plant. Like Chrissythecat stated, for a lot of people, it was the best period of their life, or the period in which everything changed suddenly. Especially for the young, they usually grew up even faster. War has a way of doing that to people, shaking them up.
The picture has so much absurd humor in it, and brilliant character development even for lesser characters. Witness the three major scenes we see with Pauline - first the loss of her mother, then the semi-humorous loss of her dignity, and finally her empathy for the family who has lost all their wordly possessions. This is one of those films that keeps improving on re-views.
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