More Domestic Stuff
Aside from finishing up Gun (Still haven’t finished the review, though I’ve started it) the only other thing done this weekend was our first Christmas shopping trip as a married couple, which was consummately weird, because all of a sudden I had to consider things like shopping for the in-laws, and it looks like we’re going to be hosting our first Christmas party in the new apartment. Well, it’s not actually a Christmas party since I hate the damn things, but more like a dinner party, as in only a few close friends are going to be showing up, and presents will be exchanged and all that stuff. I’ve always been really bad for getting presents for people (Which is why I’m never too fussy about not getting presents in return; anything else would be pure hypocrisy) but it would seem that as a married couple, with other friends who are also married couples, suddenly it seems to be more imperative to actually go ahead and do this.
Also finally got around to watching Kingdom of Heaven the most recent Ridley Scott epic. All the usual Scott trademarks are there; not terrific story, some nice acting moments, but my GOD can that man put a shot together. I sat there with my mouth open over how “painterly” some of the shots were, like the ships leaving Messina for Jerusalem, or the Lord of the Rings scale battle towards end of the Muslim siege of Jerusalem. It was a badly, badly paced film with all kinds of questionable cuts made to the characterization and plot in order to move to the next amazing battle, but the battles were indeed amazing. The thing that really freaked me out about the scale of the battles was the very reality of them. I mean, it’s one thing to see Orcs assaulting a gorgeous and obviously fantasy city like Minas Tirith, but to see 200, 000 Muslim soldiers storming Jerusalam with siege towers and fireballs and knowing this actually happened at some point in human history was mindboggling. Maybe it’s better, maybe it’s worse, but you just don’t have battles of that scale anymore in the push-button, full-auto with night vision wars we conduct these days in which heavily armed strike groups have replaced the traditional formation wars of centuries past.
Then again, I’m not a military historian, but it sure was damn impressive looking…
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Oh fine, I’ll bite…
It’s hard to recall Ko’H,it came out in a glut of swords and sandals flicks, Troy managing to look heroic in contrast to the extreme craptaculence that was Alexander. After three hours of Stone’s directorial Waterloo my critical faculties were so completely numbed that every other film seemed absolutely magnificent by virtue of simply not being Alexander…
Sorry, had a point – massive force doesn’t impress me much, unless there’s a half-decent attempt to put the melee in some sort of operational-strategic context. Castle seiges are a narrative godsend because the objective is fairly self-evident and there are all those wacky seige engines to geek out on. Of course engineering ingenuity must always even the still-impossible odds, KoH follows the seige-cliché playbook religiously. Trying to show a meeting engagement in any sensible fashion is a much greater challenge. Only a lucky few have braved to show the complexity of battlefield maneuver and emerged with a story worth telling.
With regards to modern war, the scale and the massive force are there, but spread out over vaster speeds and spaces. A quarter million troops storming a country the size of France over the course of a month can’t be as neatly encapsulated in a tidy visual shot of a town under seige, but there are tales there to be told, no less impressive and mind boggling, for those who have the stomach for it…