World War media
Feb. 3rd, 2021 11:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lucymonsterThings I've been reading/watching/listening to the last couple of weeks.
Books
Stalingrad by Antony Beevor deserves its prizes. Popular war history always has that fine line to walk of being neither so dry that it loses its audience nor so emotive that it loses its academic credibility, and this one hits that balance really well. I'm not going to lie, it's a bit of a slog in places - Beevor loves tactical breakdowns more than most people love their children, and devotes long tracts to step-by-step descriptions of troop movements and equipment. But it ends up working in his favour, because the book's main emotional focus is on the experience of ordinary soldiers, and the barrage of nitty-gritty details helps suck civilian readers into their world where, actually, it matters a lot who's driving specifically which tank.
A lot of my war-related reading tends to swing between two extremes of intimate biography and sweeping thematic overview. Beevor sits very deliberately in the middle, and takes a particularly scathing view of the leaders on both sides who prioritised big-picture ideological thinking over the mundane realities faced by their troops on the ground. Bungled supply chain logistics and political interference are his two main culprits for a large majority of what went wrong on the Eastern Front, and he writes with polite, academically worded anger on behalf of the soldiers who suffered for each bad decision.
I'm still working my way to the end of the book, slowed down by the regular breaks I need to a) look up details on wikipedia and b) soothe my battered faith in humanity every time Hitler or Stalin decides to pour another few tens of thousands of young men into the meatgrinder for mindbogglingly stupid reasons. But it's rewarding enough that I don't mind taking the time to finish.
Movies
Dunkirk was worthwhile viewing, but I didn't love it as much as I hoped to given its reputation. I think Nolan was aiming for an effect similar to Beevor, where the real "main character" would be the collective experience of the people who served. The issue is that unlike a narrative history book, a movie kind of has to focus on individuals, and the compromise he struck - minimising the dialogue, and treating the main cast as symbolic everymen rather than fleshed-out characters - made half of them feel more like cardboard cutouts than real people. The young infantry set were the worst for this, and the distractingly weird casting didn't help. Try as I might, I just couldn't make Private Harry "One Direction" Styles work for me.
On the other hand, the cinematography was beautiful, and I really enjoyed the attention to historical detail in the costumes and props. The scenes out on the water were the most effective. They really made me feel how horrific the channel crossing was for evacuees, cowering on overcrowded ships with nothing but chance and Tom Hardy to prevent the Luftwaffe from picking them off. I also found the relative lack of canned Hollywood heroism challenging in a good way. A full third of the total screentime is devoted to a gaggle of panicked deserters throwing each other under the bus in a desperate scramble to save themselves. They're hard to like, but given the hell they're facing, they're also hard to blame.
Music
Fun fact: "Extreme metal concept albums about the World Wars" are a flourishing little subgenre. "Extreme metal concept albums about the World Wars by bands who aren't confirmed neo-Nazis" are a bit harder to come by, but the time I spent googling "[band] NSBM" on every new contender was well worth the beautiful neo-Nazi-free playlist I eventually got out of it.
...Of Frost and War by Hail of Bullets spans the Eastern Front from Operation Barbarossa through to the Battle of Berlin. It's fairly classic death metal, heavy and brutal with raw, distinctive vocals that I absolutely love. Musically it's all slightly one-note - which I don't mind, because it happens to be a note I love, but a little bit more variety would have made the album stronger. The tracks do start blurring together a bit by the end. Still. I criticise, but I keep going back to play it again, so obviously they've done something right.
The Blind Leading the Blind by 1914 is the only thing that stopped this post from being WWII-specific, but I couldn't bear to leave it off because it's one of the best things I've listened to in ages. Movie dialogue! Propaganda jingles! Creepy violin solos! All mixed through a rock solid base of bleak, sludgy death/doom. It's not the kind of album you leave playing in the background. It's really thoughtful, narratively driven, sit-down-and-actively-listen music, and I can see it staying atop my favourites list for a while to come.
The Diarist by Dark Lunacy is about the siege of Leningrad. It's more focused on sorrow and atmosphere than on violence, and the musical style reflects that. I do wish they'd run the lyrics past a native English speaker, but that's the only complaint I have. After all the huge-scale overview type works I've been consuming recently, it was really nice to delve into such an intimate, specific narrative.
Books
Stalingrad by Antony Beevor deserves its prizes. Popular war history always has that fine line to walk of being neither so dry that it loses its audience nor so emotive that it loses its academic credibility, and this one hits that balance really well. I'm not going to lie, it's a bit of a slog in places - Beevor loves tactical breakdowns more than most people love their children, and devotes long tracts to step-by-step descriptions of troop movements and equipment. But it ends up working in his favour, because the book's main emotional focus is on the experience of ordinary soldiers, and the barrage of nitty-gritty details helps suck civilian readers into their world where, actually, it matters a lot who's driving specifically which tank.
A lot of my war-related reading tends to swing between two extremes of intimate biography and sweeping thematic overview. Beevor sits very deliberately in the middle, and takes a particularly scathing view of the leaders on both sides who prioritised big-picture ideological thinking over the mundane realities faced by their troops on the ground. Bungled supply chain logistics and political interference are his two main culprits for a large majority of what went wrong on the Eastern Front, and he writes with polite, academically worded anger on behalf of the soldiers who suffered for each bad decision.
I'm still working my way to the end of the book, slowed down by the regular breaks I need to a) look up details on wikipedia and b) soothe my battered faith in humanity every time Hitler or Stalin decides to pour another few tens of thousands of young men into the meatgrinder for mindbogglingly stupid reasons. But it's rewarding enough that I don't mind taking the time to finish.
Movies
Dunkirk was worthwhile viewing, but I didn't love it as much as I hoped to given its reputation. I think Nolan was aiming for an effect similar to Beevor, where the real "main character" would be the collective experience of the people who served. The issue is that unlike a narrative history book, a movie kind of has to focus on individuals, and the compromise he struck - minimising the dialogue, and treating the main cast as symbolic everymen rather than fleshed-out characters - made half of them feel more like cardboard cutouts than real people. The young infantry set were the worst for this, and the distractingly weird casting didn't help. Try as I might, I just couldn't make Private Harry "One Direction" Styles work for me.
On the other hand, the cinematography was beautiful, and I really enjoyed the attention to historical detail in the costumes and props. The scenes out on the water were the most effective. They really made me feel how horrific the channel crossing was for evacuees, cowering on overcrowded ships with nothing but chance and Tom Hardy to prevent the Luftwaffe from picking them off. I also found the relative lack of canned Hollywood heroism challenging in a good way. A full third of the total screentime is devoted to a gaggle of panicked deserters throwing each other under the bus in a desperate scramble to save themselves. They're hard to like, but given the hell they're facing, they're also hard to blame.
Music
Fun fact: "Extreme metal concept albums about the World Wars" are a flourishing little subgenre. "Extreme metal concept albums about the World Wars by bands who aren't confirmed neo-Nazis" are a bit harder to come by, but the time I spent googling "[band] NSBM" on every new contender was well worth the beautiful neo-Nazi-free playlist I eventually got out of it.
...Of Frost and War by Hail of Bullets spans the Eastern Front from Operation Barbarossa through to the Battle of Berlin. It's fairly classic death metal, heavy and brutal with raw, distinctive vocals that I absolutely love. Musically it's all slightly one-note - which I don't mind, because it happens to be a note I love, but a little bit more variety would have made the album stronger. The tracks do start blurring together a bit by the end. Still. I criticise, but I keep going back to play it again, so obviously they've done something right.
The Blind Leading the Blind by 1914 is the only thing that stopped this post from being WWII-specific, but I couldn't bear to leave it off because it's one of the best things I've listened to in ages. Movie dialogue! Propaganda jingles! Creepy violin solos! All mixed through a rock solid base of bleak, sludgy death/doom. It's not the kind of album you leave playing in the background. It's really thoughtful, narratively driven, sit-down-and-actively-listen music, and I can see it staying atop my favourites list for a while to come.
The Diarist by Dark Lunacy is about the siege of Leningrad. It's more focused on sorrow and atmosphere than on violence, and the musical style reflects that. I do wish they'd run the lyrics past a native English speaker, but that's the only complaint I have. After all the huge-scale overview type works I've been consuming recently, it was really nice to delve into such an intimate, specific narrative.
no subject
Date: 2021-02-03 01:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-02-03 01:40 am (UTC)Not to make life harder for you, but Stalingrad is REALLY worth reading. You might have an easier time of it than I've been having, too, given your Soviet expertise. Certainly the Russian names will be easier to keep track of. Right now I'm more disgusted with Stalin than I can remember ever being. The fact that so many of his policies were maniacally evil is one thing, but the profligate waste on top of all the cruelty is hard to stomach, and it's a topic on which Beevor waxes eloquent at every chance.
no subject
Date: 2021-02-03 02:17 am (UTC)There seems to be genuinely no bottom to Stalin's awfulness, which may account for the hypnotic effect of Stalinist Russia? The combination of evil and eye-watering incompetence is mind-boggling.