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charlesg-1
Reviews
Voices in Wartime (2005)
An extraordinary meta-poem worth experiencing
I was originally skeptical when I first heard about this documentary about how poetry has been the most expressive medium to voice the experience of war by combatants and civilians. But, after seeing it, I have to say that it delivered.
The movie itself is a meta-poem, with a lyrical structure oscillating between poems, interviews with poets, and news/newsreel footage. After achieving a pleasant rhythm, it drifts to variations with meta-verses on the largest conflicts the US Armed Forces have participated in: Civil War, World War 1, World War 2 and Vietnam. What it builds is an incredible link that we now call post-traumatic stress disorder, was previously called combat fatigue, which was previously called shell-shock. That these occur is inseparable from war itself.
The superintendent of West Point is one of the experts this movie interviewed, and his insights into the ways poetry can help soldiers and veterans with no other way to express their experience were particularly valuable. For my own taste, I would have wished the movie took a stronger stand either in support of the glory of war, or support of the uselessness of war, but it left that open. It's not perfect, but easily the best documentary on poetry I've ever seen.
It is my opinion that the best poetry sets up a rhythm, delves into its subject, and ends with a line that stops you cold. This meta-poem movie does that: ending with a poem that stops you cold.