Need a movie with a specific ending from battle scene!

September 27, 2011 6:47 PM

Looking for another Movie Scene... A war movie with a good ending, specifically a scene that can be used to show: 1. the skills the soldiers or people learned will be used in their normal life or 2. that there will always be more battles to fight.

same as this post, but another talk
http://ask.metafilter.com/196528/Need-a-movie-with-a-good-retreat-from-battle-scene

This is for the end of the confirmation retreat, My goal is to say the stuff they learned on the retreat they have to go now and use it in their normal life, and talk about their will always be battles to fight...

so any good movies that can be used for either of these topics would be great!

posted by fozzie33 to Media & Arts (4 answers total)

You'd have to see it in order to judge its suitability, but I've always felt like The Americanization/Education of Emily (it is known under both titles) has a lot to say about war and honour and cowardice and rationality.

James Garner is the American solider who wants to avoid battle. Julie Andrews is the British woman who wants to love a true hero, and not a big old chicken with a yellow stripe down his back.

There's a good scene about what life and God means to Garner's character in part eight on the Youtube upload. (I think it comes about the 7:30 or 8:00 minute mark in this clip.)

It looks like the whole movie has been posted online. I'd start here and just follow the parts.

Part 10 (if you're only watching clips) is the American invasion onto European soil, which depicts Garner's character in a most unheroic light, and Andrews' character's reaction but it's important (I think) to see how the character got into that predicament in the first place -- so what I'm saying is watch more of the movie than just the clip.

The deals with a lot of hard issues and isn't quite the typical rah-rah glories of war film. It may give the kids something to think about (assuming they will actually watch an ancient, black-and-white movie).

Starting around the 7:00 minute mark there's a discussion about the nature of war (although the whole scene starting at around 5:00 minutes is worth seeing).
posted by sardonyx at 7:57 PM on September 27, 2011

The end of Oliver Stone's Platoon has the narrator saying that he, unformed before Vietnam, is the child of the two senior Sergeants in his platoon:

Barnes, the merciless and scheming killer who stops at nothing to stay alive, and Elias, the compassionate and wise old soldier who takes the new soldiers under his wing and his eventually betrayed and killed by Barnes.
posted by atchafalaya at 8:04 AM on September 28, 2011

Response by poster: i mentioned in previous post, this is for 8th graders... church retreat, can't be too deep or too violent
posted by fozzie33 at 9:25 AM on September 28, 2011

Well, the end of Platoon, when the narrator reflects on who he's become, is pretty serene. The last couple of minutes, say.
posted by atchafalaya at 9:25 AM on September 29, 2011