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Friday Fun Thread for October 18, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I just don't think the film is anywhere near as one-sided or morally black-and-white as you're making out. The German sniper in the clock tower has the opportunity to shoot Caparzo, but refrains from doing so until Caparzo returns the little French girl to her parents, presumably for fear of her getting hit in the crossfire. After killing Mellish in a vicious hand-to-hand mêlée, the unnamed German soldier can't bring himself to kill the cowering, snivelling Upham who clearly poses no threat. Perhaps we aren't strictly invited to sympathise with Steamboat Willie when he's pathetically sobbing and begging for his life, but I think we are at least invited to understand Upham's reluctance to kill a POW in cold blood. If Miller's squad had executed him, it would have been just one of several war crimes the Rangers are depicted committing: I don't think the audience is expected to cheer at their decision to shoot surrendering Czech conscripts at Omaha, or needlessly prolonging the deaths of several German soldiers by allowing them to burn to death rather than quickly finishing them off.

Of course the American soldiers are our viewpoint characters and we are intended to sympathise with them (because, duh, the Allies just were more sympathetic than the Germans), but I don't think the film can honestly be said to depict the German soldiers as a formless mass of interchangeable faceless monsters, nor the American soldiers as stalwart, wholly morally upstanding heroes who never put a foot wrong.