WWII

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Hacksaw Ridge; A Response

I was drawn to the movie, Hacksaw Ridge, because it focused on the strength and integrity of one man who was determined to stick to his beliefs at the same time as supporting his country. Hacksaw Ridge also intrigued me because it left nothing to the imagination. War was not glorified in this depiction of the bloody battle. The movie portrayed the reality and horrors of war quite graphically. Although the first hour of the movie was slow and drawn out, I realized how necessary the story build up was in order to truly appreciate the incredible act of bravery that Desmond Doss showed. He not only saved 75 wounded soldiers that night, he modelled and taught the men to follow what true dedication to ones own convictions can accomplish.

Often World War Two movies glorify the act of war where as this movie glorified the act of individuals who volunteered to give their life to their country. It showed that most men who volunteered were although wanting to fight for their country, were terrified and unprepared for what the battlefield could bring. Desmond Doss believed that he was destined to save lives rather than take lives. This was an unusual and unique situation for someone going to war at this time. The movie Hacksaw Ridge opens the viewers eyes to a different perspective of a soldiers journey on the battlefield.

Throughout this unit we have been working on baseline assignmsnts to better our learning and understanding off the topic. Below are the assignments I have completed.

This is an assignment called 321. On the left side of the column we wrote 3 thoughts we had about World War Two before we learned about it in depth. Then 2 questions we had. And finally, a metaphor about World War Two. On the right side of the collum we didn’t the same thing, although it was after we learned about the topic. At the bottom is a connection, or a bridge, between our two thoughts from before and after learning about the topic in depth.

 

Ome of our tasks was to take notes for 5 different lectures. We had to transform these notes

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Fear of a Soldier

There you are, walking down the street slowly at night. You approach a dark corner and become hesitant, your heart beating faster, your breathing quickening, mind racing. Every evil thought comes into your mind. What could be around that corner. With sweaty palms you slowly reach for the wall to get a grip on something so you don’t fall over, then carefully move your head first then your body to follow and turn to peer around the corner. You jump as you see a figure on the ground. However it is only a stray cat and runs away when it sees you. Fear took over your mind in this situation and made you take a safe scenario and turn it into a horrifying task. For most soldiers they went through the same thought process in World War Two, however for them it wasn’t a stray cat around the corner, but am enemy soldier ready to attack.

A few weeks ago we had the amazing privilege and opportunity to have a man named Helmut Lemmke, a World War Two veteran, come into our classroom and speak to us about his stories and experiences from the time when he was on the battlefield.

Helmut Lemmke 1944

Mostly in class we learn about the ally side of the war, stories from British, Canadian and American soldiers. However Mr. Helmut Lemmke is German and fought on the Russian front for the axis side. Hearing his point of view on the war wasn’t that different then from some of the stories of a Canadian during the war. They all had one great thing in common. Fear. 

Our class meeting Helmut, March 2017

We heard of many times where Helmut was scared as he was fighting in the war. This lead me to think about the concept of fear more and how it effected the soldiers fighting. I created the question, “In what ways did fear help and protect soldiers during the war?”

Gabi, Anatolia and I sat down together and discussed this concept along with Gabi’s concept of creativity in the face of danger. We talked about stories Helmut had told us, connected our two ideas and talked about the similarities of the two and put this discussion into a podcast for you all to listen.

Enjoy!

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Macbeth Movie Progress

“Fair is foul and foul is fair,” (Macbeth). This famous quote from the Shakespeare play, Macbeth, means things that look pretty (“fair”) will become ugly (“foul”) and things that are ugly will become beautiful, which describes exactly how this Macbeth movie project is going.

Our class is currently working on a collaborative project where we have to use the play of Macbeth and create a movie using that storyline but in a different setting. Since we were most recently learning about World War II, that is the setting where our movie will take place. The whole class is working together on this one movie, which when you think about it sounds like it’s going to be a disaster. Currently it is a disaster, but it didn’t start out that way.

When we first began the project everybody was bouncing ideas off of each other and for the most part everyone was really excited to get going. We were all given roles and were then set off to begin. The script writing went well and so did preparing the costumes and props. However, as soon as the filming started things started to go down hill. Since everyone in our class has very different personalities and ways of working we found it challenging to get anything done in a short amount of time. There was always one person who wouldn’t like the way we filmed a scene or wouldn’t like how the actors presented themselves so we would have to re do it and try another way. In reality we probably shouldn’t have listened because if only one person was complaining about how they didn’t like it, then oh well, you can’t please everyone. Especially not when there are 25 of you working on one project.

The filming process has involved a lot of out of school time, which I know for myself and a lot of people is challenging to do considering we all have a lot of extra curricular activities and homework from other challenging classes. We never had one day where everyone showed up and I don’t think we will have one day like that. However we have managed to work through these bumps slowly, (and with a lot of fighting). Currently our project has been reduced and we have plans to continue filming Friday, Saturday, and Sunday all day. Here’s to hoping everything goes well and nobody else gets into any more fights!

On a better note, my job on this movie is costumes and makeup. I was in charge of designing all of the costumes to make sure they fit the roll of soldiers from WWII. Also I have had to do makeup for the actors. I transformed three people into dead civilians/ghosts. And what I find the most fun to do and what I have done most of is create fake gashes and cuts on people. Of course I didn’t do all of it alone. Maria was a big help and I’d say we both worked equally on making sure all of our actors looked beaten up enough.

The Macbeth movie project is still a work in progress and I will post again once the product has been completed. Hopefully that will be in the next week if we stay on top of all our work and filming days.