Monday, February 02, 2009

The Red Baron

If he really was that handsome, and a google search proved that he was, I would have supported the German side (during the WWI) as well. Joking of course, but I love the fact that this film is shown from the German point of view. Having read many stories for me it is clear that those men who flew during the WWI were as much of soldiers as myself, the fact that most of them were just boys who wanted to fly (and this is for both sides) makes it quite tragic that they actually went to war. Still, we all know that the WWI at first was looked upon as an exciting opportunity to see the world, they did expect it to end before Christmas, but it did not.

The film began with a lovely image of baron as a child who is just pointing his gun at a deer, then he hears and aeroplane engine, puts his gun down, jumps on the horse, and rides into an open area to be able to see the plane. That is the baron I saw throughout the film, a man who loved flying not killing (in my opinion the priorities in the beginning of the film clearly show that). The whole story as we know ends tragically but it shouldn't be a reason to stop you from watching the film, as my husband always argues, that we should never watch films about either of world wars as we always know who wins and it's never Germans. In fact he once suggested that someone should make a film with German's winning because it has become boring over the years to watch Germans lose.

I also loved the little bits of information at the end of the film about the pilots, it was very interesting, and they even created a fictional character Friedrich Sternberg who is representing so many Jews who fought in the WWI along side with Germans: "During the WWI many Jewish pilots fought for the German empire. Many of them were highly decorated fighter aces"

All in all a very good film, showing that neither of the sides really enjoyed the war, and all those young men were just cannon fodder. Unfortunately it was the great (more often there was actually nothing great about them), that always started the wars and fed the ground with bodies of thousands, millions of bodies, nothing has changed to this very day, has it?

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