I went to see a preview showing of Flags of our Fathers tonight. It is a movie about the invasion of Iwo Jima during World War II and the men who were immortalized on film while raising an American flag on the highest point of the island. I sat through the screening with my stomach churning, fingers splayed in front of my eyes, trying to avoid seeing some of the worst moments.
My mind raced in an attempt to absorb the horror of the now-historic war that I was watching and I started thinking about the current war. I kept coming around to the absolute waste of human potential that it is. What harm it does to the people who survive it. I didn’t leave the movie with any answers or solutions, and the walk home didn’t deliver an epiphany. I was opposed to war before I walked into that theater tonight and I walked out shaken and silent, more convicted in my belief that this is not the way to solve things. I believe that that was probably part of Clint Eastwood intention in making this movie, and I hope that others see it the way I did, as an effective anti-war statement.
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