DVD Review: 1917 directed by Sam Mendes

1917
directed by Sam Mendes (DVD 1917)

There have been many great movies out this past decade covering events that happened during World War I and World War II, but this movie is among the best war films that I have seen. Set during World War I, a young soldier is given the task to deliver a message to the General on the front lines to stop an attack on German forces that have led them into a trap. Unless the soldier can get through, there will be a massacre of English forces. One of the men preparing to fight the Germans is the soldier’s own brother. The soldier, Blake, and his friend Schofield know that everything depends on them. This is an extremely tense film with scenes that are very bloody and difficult to watch, but the story is excellent. I highly recommend it.

 

(If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try War Horse, Hacksaw Ridge or Dunkirk)

 

( Internet Movie Database entry for this film ) | ( official 1917 Facebook page )

 

Recommended by Kim J.
Bennett Martin Public Library — Public Service

 

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DVD Review: Joyeux Noel

Joyeux Noel
[DVD Joyeux]

During the early days of the first World War, really only five months after hostilities began, the French, German and British forces on the battlefield called a truce on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, meeting in the middle of the battlefield to share the task of burying their dead, but also so share small gifts and souvenirs, such as exchanging their helmets with their enemies, and to play impromptu games of soccer and sing Christmas carols.

Joyeux Noel is a 2005 French-language film, nominated for the Foreign Language Academy Award, which dramatizes this unique moment in the history of warfare. It features incredible performances from an international cast, and astonishing attention to the details of set design and costuming. This cease-fire in 1914 occurred again during Christmas of 1915, but to a much lesser extent, and the camaraderie disappeared by 1916.

Joyeux Noel humanizes and shows the commonalities of the participants in a horrific time in world history, and is an excellent piece of film-making. I highly recommend it, as long as you don’t mind subtitles.

[ Internet Movie Database entry for this film ] | [ official Joyeux Noel web site ] [ Wikipedia article on The Christmas Truce ]

 

Read Becky W.C.’s review of Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce in the February 2015 Staff Recommendations on BookGuide!

 

Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library – Public Service

 

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Review: Winnie's Great War by Lindsay Mattick

Winnie’s Great War
by Lindsay Mattick [j Mattick]

This is a charming little novel that fictionalizes the real-life events that inspired the literary legend that is Winnie-the-Pooh, by A.A. Milne. Most readers are probably not aware that the honey-loving bear of Milne’s story was inspired by an actual Canadian bear, who had quite a few adventures of his own!

Winnie was an orphaned female black bear cub who was purchased by Canadian cavalry veterinarian Harry Colebourn at a railway station as he was being sent for troop training in Eastern Canada in preparation for being sent to Europe to fight in World War I (i.e. “The Great War”). Colebourn named her Winnipeg, in honor of his hometown, but that was quickly shortened to Winnie. Winnie was a mascot for Colebourns unit of front-line veterinary doctors, and they couldn’t bear to leave her behind when they took the ocean voyage to Europe. After many exciting adventures with Colebourn and his fellow soldiers, ultimately Winnie was turned over to the London Zoo when Harry and his comrades headed into combat. Colebourn planned to reclaim her after the war…but no-one had any idea how long this World War would ultimately go on.

During those war years, Winnie became a huge attraction at the London Zoo, where she was beloved by both the zoo visitors and staff. She had a playful personality, but could also sense anxiety and fear in other animals and her mere presence could often calm creatures of many species. It was while Winnie was at the zoo that author Milne brought his son, Christopher Robin Milne to the zoo, and the boy fell in love with the bear…renaming his own stuffed bear “Winnie-the-Pooh” (a combination of Winnie the real-life bear, and a nick-name in the Milne household). It was this that inspired Milne to write his beloved childrens’ books.

I enjoyed this short novel very much, and feel like I know a lot more about the true history of Winnie now, although the author (a descendant of Colebourn) takes some creative liberties in sections of the novel — especially in attributing human-like personalities and speech (although only among the animals themselves) to most of the various animals in the story. But, but a story that aims to entertaining a youthful audience, this is fully understandable. A fun, enlightening read!

[If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try Finding Winnie, by Lindsay Mattick, Winnie: The True Story of the Bear Who Inspired WInnie the Pooh, by Sally Walker or Goodbye Christopher Robin, in both book and DVD formats.]

[ publisher’s official Winnie’s Great War web page ] | [ official Lindsay Mattick web site ]

Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library

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New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewers recommendations!

Silent Night by Stanley Weintraub

Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce
by Stanley Weintraub [940.4 Wei]

100 years ago at Christmas time Europe was literally entrenched in World War I. It had been going since August 1914 and many thought it was already overdue to be finished. The Western Front running through France had become a muddy, icy mess as winter set in and the physical and mental fatigue the soldiers felt sparked a 'spontaneous' 3-day ceasefire in many quarters of the fighting. As the author puts it so aptly in one of his chapter titles, there was "an outbreak of peace." Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and Boxing Day saw a deliberate lull in the war in numerous places along the battle line. Both Germans and Allies took pause to celebrate the holidays as best they could, and to reach out across "No Man's Land" for conversation, exchanges of goods, singing, putting up tannenbaum, tending to their dead, and even playing some sports. Of course this was contradictory to the protocol of war and the dictums of the high commands but yet it happened, in ultimately f utile hopes it would mean a quick end to the conflict. Weintraub uses much original source material to illustrate events, breaking them down into real time. However, I did not care for his repeated technique of going off on tangents of fictional descriptions and scenarios in the midst of the factual accounts. I did appreciate, though, that he outlined a variety of alternate-history outcomes if the Christmas Truce had affected the course of the war in a more significant way. Weintraub also succeeds at giving a good feel for everyday life in the trenches. This is a good read for anyone interested in military history and general history, and reminds us how extreme humanity's good and bad qualities can be. -- recommended by Becky W.C. - Walt Branch Library [ see Becky's Reviewer Profile and more of her reviews ]

[ The Christmas Truce background page on History.com ] | [ Wikipedia page for Stanley Weintraub ]

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New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewers recommendations!

Maus: A Survivor's Tale - My Father Bleeds History by Art Spiegelman

Maus: A Survivor's Tale - My Father Bleeds History
by Art Spiegelman [940.531 Spi]

Maus I is the first of two graphic novels (the second being Maus II: and here my troubles began) detailing the life of Art Spiegelman's father, Vladek, a Polish-Jewish holocaust survivor. These are extremely important books in terms of what they do for the medium of comics as well as the history of the holocaust. As a cartoonist, Spiegelman's prior work had been extremely avante garde, experimental, and difficult to parse, but Maus marks a change towards something more concrete. The style is rough but straightforward, opting to deliver its story efficiently. To contrast this, however, Spiegelman has chosen to depict the various European ethnicities as having the faces of different species of animals. The most poignant example being: Jews are depicted as mice, Germans as cats. This achieves two aims. 1) It highlights the racist/anti-semitic attitudes of mid-century Europe, and 2) it simplifies the face of each character to the point where we are able as readers to put ourselves in that place. Maus is a necessary read for anyone wishing to understand the narrative power of comics, as well as any student of history. Each page is a carefully diagrammed account, taking us step-by-step through Vladek Spiegelman's ordeal as told through a series of interviews with his son. These accounts are punctuated with scenes of the present, detailing the complicated and infuriating relationship between Art and his father. I'll say it again more simply: you need to read this book right now. -- recommended by Ben F. - South Branch Library

[Also available : The second volume Maus II: A Survivor's tale - And Here My Troubles Began.]

[ Wikipedia page for Art Spiegelman ] | [ official Art Spiegelman and the Making of Maus web site from PBS ]

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New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewers recommendations!