Civilization (1916)

This blog post is just a note to myself that the movie Civilization, made in 1916, was actually able to resonate with me despite its obviousness and stage-like camera angles.

Civilization: arms havn't been crossed this seriously since the rain of Ceaser Augustus.

Ah, what the hell; I'll talk about a few of the themes.

One theme the movie explores is the dulling power of abstraction, and it does this through the king. The king, by remaining in his castle, abstracts himself from the effects of war. From his castle viewpoint, all he can really see of the war are the numbers that it's churning out, so he treats the war like a mathemetician would. When he finds that he is loosing the war, and his armies are falling back, he issues orders for more soldiers to be recruited, forcing all eligible young people to join his armies and fight in his war. Sending thousands of people to die makes the king sound like in inhumane and morally unjust person, but we later learn that he is not unjust; he is just ignorant. When Jesus appears to him in a vision and takes him for a walk through all of the battlefields of his war, the abstraction between him and his subjects is instantly removed, and he realizes how terrible his decisions were.

Another theme the movie explores is, obviously, the terrors of war. The first way it does this is through the soldiers. The soldiers in this movie do not have a good time. Some of them loose their arms, some of them loose their dignity, some of them loose their sanity, but most of them loose their lives. In fact, enough soldiers die in this movie for the king to issue desperate orders to recruit any and all stragglers that are of age. The second way the movie explores the terrors of war is through its citizens. While the soldiers loose their lives, the citizens loose their homes, their loved ones, their money, and their wellbeing. There is a very memorable shot in the movie (probably because its one of the only close ups) of a woman begging for food while soldiers are busy eating in the background. There are also several shots of homes ransacked and burned to the ground.

A few should be more than two, but I'm tired, and I have to wake up early tomorrow, so no more themes for you. Goodnight, folks. I feel happy. I finally got something out of an old movie (well, an old movie that isn't ten minutes long and isn't called The Land Beyond the Sunset)