I don't really agree with Baloo on that at all. Yes, there is the hard-nosed sergeant, the well loved CO, the outcast soldier, but each character has a backstory. Each character is fleshed out. They may have a cliched basis, as most characters do in every story told since the dawn of modern history, but most are actually well thought out.

The same is true in SIL. Shakespeare is your stereotypical down and out artist with a creative block, Paltrow is the stereotypical character who is different from her peer group trying to live her dream. The story is cliched as well. The down and out artist with a creative block meets the "different" girl and she becomes his muse. They fall in love. The world is shocked by the "different" girl's behavior, but all ends happily. They do have some meat on their bones, though, and the characters are well thought out and real (except, maybe, Ben Affleck's character

)

In any case, I disagree with SPR's characters being flat.

quote:
The one execption may have been Opum and the fact that people get pissed that he is paralyzed with fear missed the point. Not everyone is cut out of combat.

Opum is one of the best characters in the film. I still hate the fact that he let his buddies go without fricking ammo to be ambushed by Nazi soldiers. It makes me want to kick the guy. I understand why Opum was included. I understand not everyone is cut out for combat. shite, Opum had only fired a rifle in basic. He wasn't a Ranger. He didn't storm the beaches of Normandy. It wouldn't make sense for him to be fricking Rambo, but the reason that scene was included was precisely to evoke an emotional response. Opum's cowardice in the face of the enemy is very real, but it's also infuriating and nearly every guy who saw the film wanted to shout "GET THE HELL UP THOSE STAIRS, YOU WHINY LITTLE BITCH!" But he doesn't. He cries. And it's brilliant.

This post was edited on 1/15/13 at 2:10 pm

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Posted by Baloo

Formerly MDGeaux

Member since Sep 2003

49645 posts

Posted on 1/15/13 at 2:32 pm to LoveThatMoney

Opum's character actually gets to everything I dislike about the film. He's the effete intellectual who is too big of a pussy to actually fight for his country, unlike the true Americans who are salt of the earth. It's just offensive. Like, World War I didn't crank out a high amount of great poets who fought with valor in that war.

It's just lazy. It's picking on the weak, nerdy kid in the audience, telling him that while these more virile men have bravery and courage, you're just a weak coward because you went to college.

The WWII cottage industry of the "Greatest Generation" is essentially the Baby Boomers growing up and realizing what jackasses they were to their parents, so they better apologize before they die. Since I'm not the one with daddy issues, I'm not really interested in the haliography. But Opum represents the Baby Boomers, who dodged the draft and went to college and are less of a man than those heroes who fought the Nazis. It is the ultimate in Spielberg wallowing in self-pity and talking about what a loser and a coward he is.

Opum is not only unnecessary as a character, he's downright offensive, as if one can't be both brave and intellectual. But he's in the film because after the Normandy Beach sequence, this is not a film so much about WWII, but about Baby Boomers feeling guilty about disrespecting their fathers. Which reaches its apex at the coda scene, which is cringe-inducingly terrible. Opum takes me out of the film almost entirely.

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Posted by H-Town Tiger