War Movies (Part 1)
Side Note: Before you even start reading this article, I need to give you a huge caveat, okay? There IS a time and way to leave your church. There are good and right reasons to leave your church. I’ve left my church for bad reasons, and I have followed my parents from other churches for good reasons. I’m not trying to say never leave. But, the theological and ethical reasons for justly breaking your vow to your church isn’t, in any way, the scope of this article. I'm just talking about the feelings war movies give me that I love.
When my soul feels unbelievably heavy, I watch war movies. I find them cathartic and soothing. And since I find that odd, I thought I’d explore myself a bit. I mean, do you know anyone else that finds war movies cathartic and soothing?
My first source of relief when I feel I can hardly breathe anymore is to be in Church hearing the preaching. This may seem obvious but the number of people who stop coming to church when they’re struggling tells me this needs to be said. The preaching is where Christ meets with us and we are re-armed and re-supplied.
Second is prayer. Sometimes it’s not even intelligent words or the prayers are very repetitive, but when my soul feels shredded, and my health won’t let me pitch in, I pray. I pray knowing I’m heard. I pray knowing I’m loved by my heavenly Father, that my pain is understood by Christ, and my inward groanings are carried by my Holy Spirit. This is my great comfort to endure, to keep slogging through the mud and blood of life.
Third, I watch war movies. In war movies, I’m reminded of the ugly truth of what my life actually looks like. I’m reminded that I and my church are a battered and beleaguered unit. We may all look clean and middle class, but we’re really ragged, dirty, fighting saints. This is comforting because it reminds me that my middle-class life is a veneer. This helps me because sometimes what is in my soul feels so different than my soft, quiet home. War movies remind me that it feels different because it is different. It is. I am living in a dual world – beautiful trees and bloody battle. War movies let me see, for just a few hours, what I know is true by faith.
War movies are also this little space where the only way out of the brotherhood is death or an end to the war. People don’t just get to leave. I know this isn’t universally true for all war movies. In the Pacific, Sid got rotated out and went home. Snafu didn’t say goodbye on the train. There can be abrupt separation in war movies, yes. But as a whole, in Fury, Lone Survivor, Band of Brothers, Hamburger Hill, We Were Soldiers, 13 Hours, and Black Hawk Down you only get away from your crew when you die or the war ends. You don’t get to decide that the grass might be greener over there, or that group might be more fun, or those people might be more friendly. You’re on your crew and that's where you stay.
Loyalty is a hard gift. The longer I’m alive and the longer I’m in the same church, the more painful loyalty is. War movies are like an escape, just for a moment. In the bubble created by a movie covering only a few short hours, days, or months, you may not like the guy next to you, he may be reckless or annoying, or even gross and dirty, but you don’t leave. It’s not an option. You stick it out. You hold the line together. Seeing that, the sticking it out, for 2 hours or 10 episodes is calming for me.
It’s my version of Tolkien’s escape. (See above quote.) For this short time, I get to see men sticking it out, not leaving, even when they’re not all pretty, kind, or even good. Wait, how is that attractive? Because our ranks are full of sinners. Church membership isn’t about everyone being perfect.
This is why I love Fury so much! The guys are an absolutely disgusting mess, but they stick it out, they can’t get out of the tank, they have to work together. If only people looked at their church membership as a 99% you-can’t-get-out deal! If we had to work instead of leaving, imagine that. This is why I love Hamburger Hill. You don’t get out, you learn to love. Brotherhood and loyalty are so important to me and always have been. So are family and friendship. These are hallmarks of my life.
War movies are soothing pockets of loyalty when my soul is crying deep inside.
Not to make myself come across as more odd, but I love the blood, guts, violence, language, and even the over the top male gratuitousness. Why? Because it becomes the dark backdrop for some of the most beautiful, heartbreaking, courageous moments in life.
Just like fantasy exaggerates things to highlight the ordinary, and superheroes highlight protectors, and stories in general help set things right—“that’s what we storytellers do. We restore order with imagination. We instill hope again and again and again.[1]” War movies show us moments of bravery and love set against a horrible backdrop, thus highlighting the good even more.
These moments of extreme courage and comradery make us see the more ordinary moments better. They train us to see them in the everyday and to recognize them even in subtle forms.
Watching Wardaddy in Fury privately weep, pull himself together, and get his crew to refocused while breaking Machine down so he’s a help instead of a hindrance, so he doesn’t get them all killed and actually survives himself, helps me think about the emotional toll my pastors and deacons, and even our fathers pay. They can’t leave us unequipped, a danger to ourselves and others, but that equipping is hard and makes people think they’re cruel, mean, heartless, and maybe sadistic, when in reality, they’re loving you by preparing you. They’re all broken inside because it’s hard to take someone’s innocence so they survive a war.
The great horror allows the beauty to shine brighter and stronger and bolder than it would otherwise.
War movies help me not take for granted my quiet life. They help me to see how good I really have it. They remind me of the duality of life, and they help me be thankful for all that I have. They help me see everyday beauty by contrast instead of by exaggeration like fantasy.
War movies help me be a better wife. I’m often frustrated by the wives of many of the soldiers who send their men to war burdened with guilt for even going. I hate how the wives get angry and sling accusations of abandonment at their men when they knew what they signed up for!
This helps me because I know, I see, how I don’t want to be. I think my husband has had lunch with me on Sunday maybe seven times in all of 2021. All the other Sundays, he’s had meetings, counselling sessions, officers meetings, baptismal meetings, and new members meetings. Every Sunday.
I could brow-beat him. I could nag him. I could guilt him about being a Sunday Widow. Or I can just tell him how very much I miss him and risk adding a little sliver of doubt to his mind and work. Instead, I remember all those women I don’t want to be. Instead, I check him on Sunday morning before we leave the house, I make sure he ate something, I hug him fiercely, and I send my man off on his hardest day of the week assured that I have everything under control, even myself, so he can go to battle with a full focus on the preaching and needs of everyone else.
War movies give me courage and strength. They remind me of who I want to be and who I don’t want to be. They help me to help and better understand and more fiercely love my husband.
I watch war movies a lot. I find them soothing, cathartic, and encouraging. I know, I’m weird.
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[1] Walt Disney. I’m not really a Disney fan, but this quote is exactly what I believe about stories.
