The biggest problem with this movie is political correctness...
I will explain:
The movie claims that they were all the same.
Maybe as individuals, victims in the war, they were. But otherwise they were not.
What nobody seems to understand is that war yes, is bad, but the culprits are always and only those who started it, nobody else. Are all culpable for their nation starting a war? I say yes. Just think about it, was only Hitler to blame for WW2 or was it the German people that elected him, the German people who went to fight for him, the German people who cheered him when he defeated France in 1940? Every single one of them is culpable. And what about those (very few at the time) who opposed him? Well, they are also culpable, because as one wise man once said: 'The only thing required for evil to win is for good men to do nothing'.
The same goes for war crimes. All sides commit war crimes in a war, but the only culpable ones are the ones that started the war... Think about it: do you think the allies committed no war crimes in WW2? Of course they did. Just think of the British assault on the French naval base in Algeria in 1940. The British slaughtered over 2000 French sailors in cold blood. Was that a war crime? Of course it was. Where the British culpable? Of course not, they had to do it because they were forced into a war they did not want.
Otherwise this film was a decent albeit flawed attempt at psychoanalysis of war and its effects on those involved, because it misses the main point as mentioned above.
What nobody seems to understand is that war yes, is bad, but the culprits are always and only those who started it, nobody else. Are all culpable for their nation starting a war? I say yes. Just think about it, was only Hitler to blame for WW2 or was it the German people that elected him, the German people who went to fight for him, the German people who cheered him when he defeated France in 1940? Every single one of them is culpable. And what about those (very few at the time) who opposed him? Well, they are also culpable, because as one wise man once said: 'The only thing required for evil to win is for good men to do nothing'.
The same goes for war crimes. All sides commit war crimes in a war, but the only culpable ones are the ones that started the war... Think about it: do you think the allies committed no war crimes in WW2? Of course they did. Just think of the British assault on the French naval base in Algeria in 1940. The British slaughtered over 2000 French sailors in cold blood. Was that a war crime? Of course it was. Where the British culpable? Of course not, they had to do it because they were forced into a war they did not want.
Otherwise this film was a decent albeit flawed attempt at psychoanalysis of war and its effects on those involved, because it misses the main point as mentioned above.