This won an Oscar?

I strongly disagree with you here. First, if you can't enjoy the plot, at least appreciate the clearly-effective acting and the richness of the scenery and sets. Yes, this film is Highly American, but you are the one who is truly demonstrating lameness here if you call this fluff. At the very least, this story shows the drama inflicted upon families due to a war fought on grounds not even in our country. And if you knew William Faulkner's writings (perhaps the short story following this one, Shall Not Parish) you would enjoy and understand the plot of this story more. This is not merely a sappy tale of a child wanting to go to war with his brother: it is a representation of the Southern lifestyle of its time; it emphasizes the profundity with which war can affect a local and a family; it is tale that examines the very fabric of a disturbed humanity. If this was set in the present day and about no specific war, then possibly it could have turned out to be quite lame. But if you recognise how well Faulkner's story and his beliefs are portrayed in this film (along with the drama only felt by a select group of Southener's, in addition to the general hardships inflicted by war on a homefront) then it becomes quite lame indeed to label this anything like fluff. Not liking the movie is fine, but it's wrong to shy-off others with ignorant proclamations.


"To me, no man is himself, he is the sum of his past. There is no such thing really as was because the past is. It is part of every man, every woman, and every moment. All of his and her ancestry, background, is all a part of himself and herself at any moment. And so a man, a character in a story at any moment of action is not just himself as he is then, he is all that made him..."
- Faulkner

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