アカデミー賞で一喜一憂する前に

明日のアカデミー賞では1917が作品賞を取ってもらいたいなというのがYutaの願望です。日本では今週末公開ですね。

ただ予告編やらYoutubeで見てると、綺麗にかっこよく撮りすぎているのではと少し心配です。そんな心配を文章化しているのが次のNew york timesのエッセイです。

‘1917’ Turns a Horrific War Into an Uplifting Hero’s Journey

World War I was a disaster, but Sam Mendes’s Oscar-nominated epic paints a dangerously misleading picture of the conflict.

By Cathy Tempelsman Ms. Tempelsman is a writer. Feb. 8, 2020

Yutaなりに強引にこのエッセイの肝をまとめると、1600名の兵士の命がかかっている伝令をめぐる話ですが、塹壕戦で命を落とした人数から考えると大海の一滴に過ぎないので、そこだけをクローズアップしていいことをした気になると第一次大戦の本質を見誤ることではないかという主張です。あとエッセイでは人の命をなんとも思っていない上層部のことも触れています。

In my research, I read chilling accounts of these attacks.

In ecstatic terms, Gen. Thomas Wynford Rees of Britain described the “marvelous advance” of his infantry brigade, “dressed as if on parade,” at the Battle of the Somme. Incredulous Germans watched the men walk — yes, walk — in long rows across open terrain — then proceeded to mow them down. To General Rees, the massacre was a “magnificent display of gallantry.”

On July 1, 1916, the first day of the Somme, there were nearly 60,000 British casualties (a third of them died). Five months later, the number rose to nearly 500,000, and a British general, Douglas Haig, finally ended the attack, but not before claiming that results “fully justify” the effort. He expressed no remorse for the loss of life.

In his book “The Myth of the Great War,” John Mosier describes this “slaughter of the infantry” as “almost exclusively a British achievement.”

Years later, Prime Minister David Lloyd George wrote that while General Haig “ordered many bloody battles in this war,” he took part in only two. Mr. George also noted an “inexhaustible vanity that will never admit a mistake.” It’s no wonder that General Haig was called “the butcher.”

Yutaの偏向ある戦争映画の見方かもしれまえんが、やはり戦争って嫌なものだなと心底思わせてくれるものを期待します。この作者のいうcreating emotional truthです。

I don’t expect Mr. Mendes to include every fact about the war. Almost by definition, historical drama is selective; we invent characters, we compress events.

But we do this in the interest of creating emotional truth. Mr. Mendes does the opposite. By disguising the brutal truths of the war, he sentimentalizes and even valorizes it — a war in which disregard for human life led to approximately 8.5 million military deaths around the world, and an estimated 21 million wounded.

ですからWe don’t need to feel better about World War I’s slaughter. We need to feel worse.と述べる作者にYutaは賛成です。まだ映画を見ていませんが。。。

“1917” provides escape from the true carnage of the “Great War.” Instead, it might have forced us to question the endless, inconclusive conflicts that have followed, and the butchery and sacrifice they inflict. We don’t need to feel better about World War I’s slaughter. We need to feel worse.

In a poignant image straight out of Shakespeare, Mr. Mendes’s grandfather is said to have washed his hands compulsively for the rest of his life because “he could never get clean” of the war. If we’re going to avoid the stain of endless, senseless wars in the future, we have to tell stories that focus on the horror, rather than false heroics and filmmaking feats of wonder.

ちょうど同じ時期に2年前に公開されていたピータージャクソンの第一世界大戦の映画が東京で見れます。こちらの方は塹壕戦の嫌さも戦争に参加した無意味さもしっかり描けていました。日本人は第一次大戦のヨーロッパ戦線に馴染みがないのでこういう映画も一人でも多くの人に見て欲しいなと思います。

戦争なんて心底うんざりだという思いがあったから、あの悪名高い「ミュンヘンの宥和」もあったのでしょうから、やっぱり綺麗に映画を撮っては欲しくないですね。