German band of brothers movie?

[Aragorn2002]

Now this is what I call a remarkable movie.

 

[PanzerMike]

Trailer looks pretty good for a shoe string Independent Movie.

[Erwin]

My favorite garbled line:  "Until I breathe, I will do my best to have those bastards out of Germany!"

[Ts4EVER]

Getting a Nazi vibe from this.

[Warts 'n' all]

It is hard to judge by just a trailer. But, it does have the air of a whitewash written all over it. And I can imagine the neo-morons queuing around the block to watch it. Even if serious movie journalists tear it to shreds. I'm also baffled as to why anyone would post it on on this thread, as it has nowt to do with BFC or it's games.

[Rinaldi]

Nazi Apologia doesn't for good cinema make. This trite about 'Victors writing history' is basically spoon-to-mouth apologism. The overwhelming majority of the US Army's history of WWII was greatly aided by the 'losers' offering their often arrogant and self-serving views of the conflict (Franz Halder, anyone?). To say nothing of the fact that until the wall fell the majority of our English language sources on the Russian Front were from the Germans themselves; which has lead to disastrously ingrained tropes about the Red Army that are often falsehoods with racial undertones. For losing the war so totally the Germans have been able to shape a fairly decent narrative of themselves regardless. 

Sounds like the Director popped a stiffy for a criminal organization and can't get it to deflate. I'll take a pass on this.

Edited September 11, 2016 by Rinaldi

[shift8]

If they had had true honor or loyalty, they would have either rebelled against the Third Reich or deserted. 

 

Plus I think we all have better things to do than watch a bunch of mid-life crisis Nazi wanna be's make a movie about their lost dreams and sexual frustrations. 

 

Edited September 11, 2016 by shift8

[Artemis258]

If you want an interesting band-of-brothers style film from the german perspective, try "Unsere Mutter, Unsere Vaeter" - I think it was released in America under the title "Generation War"... that one's pretty good.  

[Badger73]

27 minutes ago, Artemis258 said:

If you want an interesting band-of-brothers style film from the german perspective, try "Unsere Mutter, Unsere Vaeter" - I think it was released in America under the title "Generation War"... that one's pretty good.  

I concur.  It was shown on German television targeting the German post war "Baby-Boomers" generation showing what their own parents never talked about with them.

[wadepm]

Generation War was very good, IMO.  It is a 3 part mini series, each one is about 90 mins.  Available on Netflix...

[nik mond]

 I just watched "1944" on exodus streams, I couldn't find My Honor was loyalty. I suspect 1944 is a better movie than My Honor. Bigger budget, the story was somewhat clever with a twist in perspective about halfway through. Still not as deep as generation war but the battle scenes were well done for what they had.

[IICptMillerII]

4 hours ago, Artemis258 said:

If you want an interesting band-of-brothers style film from the german perspective, try "Unsere Mutter, Unsere Vaeter" - I think it was released in America under the title "Generation War"... that one's pretty good.  

I also agree. Watched it a year ago on Netflix and enjoyed it. Steers clear of any blatant wehrabooism, and you can tell by the end that the show is depicting a tragedy. Little if any glorification of the Nazis. 

[Bulletpoint]

Are there any "balanced" movies about the SS, exposing it for what it was but without turning to stereotypes? Less "evil nazi pew pew" and more explaining how people can be deceived by propaganda about 'honour' and 'loyalty' to commit the most despicable things.

Maybe "The Wave" is the closest we will ever get. I remember it had a big impact when we watched it in class.

Especially the last scene where the unpopular boy in class is crying after the teacher calls off the experiment and the boy realises the whole thing was a sham, and that he now lost the special status and prestige he thought he had finally achieved.

[Ts4EVER]

Not about the SS, but I can recommend "The act of killing" documentary.

[Duckman]

Probably the best movie I've seen on the SS is Conspiracy about the Wannsee conference. It shows them (and the other participants) as evil but as real people with real motivations, kind of. Branagh is surprisingly good as Heydrich.

The lack of German perspective movies is understandable but still kind of odd given the size of the market and the huge popularity of German soldier memoirs in recent years. Some of them are probably unfilmable for various reasons but a book like Koschorrek's Blood Red Snow or Knoke's I Flew for the Fuhrer could work in the right hands. There's also the controversial and very.....literary The Forgotten Soldier of course which is bound to attract a director someday. Peckinpah showed already in the 70s what a talented and ballsy director can do with harsh, unforgiving material like that.

As for this one, some of the scenes look pretty good and hopefully it's not all revisionist claptrap. The trailer gives a so-so vibe but is hardly conclusive.

[Erwin]

If you look at history, we inevitably eventually make heroes of the worst people who one would want to be around at the time.  It's just a question of enuff years having gone by that we forget the really bad stuff.

The movie "Suicide Squad" (have only read reviews so far) seems to be based on really "bad" people being heroes as they are going up against even more "evil" villains.  ie:  It's all relative.  Remember Clint Eastwood as the cold-blooded killer in the Sergio Leone films?  That was very controversial at the time.  Those "Dollar" movies revolutionized the western as prior to "Fistful of Dollars" the Eastwood character would have always been a villain (and the western was dying on its feet as it had become so clichéd).

Also note:  "Hannibal" and "Dexter" - movie and TV series glorifying serial killers(!).

To say that we mustn't make movies based on this or that, is like a red flag to a bull.  When people got fed up with the goody-goody westerns where the cowboy always won vs the baddy gunfighter it gave birth to the anti-hero western with hero as psychotic killer.  It's inevitable that people will become (may already be) bored with the goody goody allies always winning vs the nasty Nazis and SS, and the situation will (at some point) be turned on its head. 

If you think about it, it's a fascinating cultural phenomenon. 

 

 

[Aragorn2002]

19 hours ago, Rinaldi said:

To say nothing of the fact that until the wall fell the majority of our English language sources on the Russian Front were from the Germans themselves; which has lead to disastrously ingrained tropes about the Red Army that are often falsehoods with racial undertones.

 

You should read two books.

1. Stalin's secret agents, the subversion of Roosevelt's government by M. Stanton Evans and Herbert Romerstein

2. Operation Snow, how a Soviet mole in FDR's White House triggered Pearl Harbor by John Koster.

After reading these two books even people like you should be able to see the Soviets have little to complain about the way their role before, in and after the war was pictured in the West.

In fact all of you Americans and British should read these two books.

 

Edited September 12, 2016 by Aragorn2002

[Rinaldi]

Should I also start fashioning a tin foil hat? I also see how either of those two books fully addresses the fact that the Germans wrote the crushing majority of immediate the post-war history on the Eastern front.

Edited September 12, 2016 by Rinaldi

[Aragorn2002]

6 minutes ago, Rinaldi said:

Should I also start fashioning a tin foil hat? I also see how either of those two books fully addresses the fact that the Germans wrote the crushing majority of immediate the post-war history on the Eastern front.

During the war everything Russian was sacred, after the war that had to change. So the German view on the Russians balanced that view somewhat.

Edited September 12, 2016 by Aragorn2002

[Rinaldi]

That's...not how that works, no. I respectfully disagree; spewing outright falsehoods right back just means you now have two extremes, there's no 'happy middle ground' in having a Red Scare on one hand and Communist Utopians on the other. I also find it completely laughable that everything Soviet 'was sacred' in the United States just because Roosevelt was a bit more amicable mid-war to the Soviets than Churchill was. 

Considering men like  Mellenthin's 'contributions' to the historiography of WWII can be summed up as 'well Ivan knew how to dig in, but his attacks were always brutish blunders' and 'actual Asiatic hordes', I'm not certain I'm ready to hand-wave such narratives away as necessary in the Cold War world. There's also the stickiness of German generals decrying the horrific atrocities they suffered at the hands of the Soviets while passing the buck for their own onto their now conveniently eradicated regime. 

Edited September 12, 2016 by Rinaldi

[Aragorn2002]

3 minutes ago, Rinaldi said:

I also find it completely laughable that everything Soviet 'was sacred' in the United States just because Roosevelt was a bit more amicable mid-war to the Soviets than Churchill was. 

 

Believe me, it was more than 'a bit more'. FDR's surroundings were totally infiltrated and pro-communist, as you can read in these two books. He practically gave away half of Europe and other parts of the world to Stalin and his criminals at Yalta. And with it condemned millions and millions of people to death, torture and misery.

[Rinaldi]

Well at least now I know the answer to my first question. 

[shift8]

14 minutes ago, Aragorn2002 said:

Believe me, it was more than 'a bit more'. FDR's surroundings were totally infiltrated and pro-communist, as you can read in these two books. He practically gave away half of Europe and other parts of the world to Stalin and his criminals at Yalta. And with it condemned millions and millions of people to death, torture and misery.

Right.........Except he was dead by the time the war ended. Final decisions rested with Truman. 

 

[Aragorn2002]

20 minutes ago, Rinaldi said:

Well at least now I know the answer to my first question. 

That can't have been a surprise.

[Aragorn2002]

11 minutes ago, shift8 said:

Right.........Except he was dead by the time the war ended. Final decisions rested with Truman. 

 

Who was stuck to the Yalta agreement and FDR's poor choice of pro-communist advisors.