Die Brücke (The Bridge)

During World War II, as Allied forces cross into Germany, the Nazis refuse to surrender, preferring to enlist children and the elderly to fight against astronomical odds.

Men of conscious attempt to intervene but their humanistic pleas are stubbornly ignored, order and duty cold calculation overriding instincts for self-preservation.

The remnants of a revolting ideology still absolutely hold sway, the fascist Nazi imperialists still clinging to toxic masculinity.

Thus, a group of school children is enthusiastic when suddenly drafted, and given one day of uninspired training before being sent off to the field.

They've grown up together during the war and most unfortunately know little else, and they're very brave intent on self-sacrifice if it means defending their native soil.

The officer in charge decides to desert leaving the kids alone to defend a bridge, he's shot while trying to outwit the authorities codes and classification above all else.

Shortly thereafter, the very next morning, the kids find themselves ferociously tested, as three American tanks attempt to burst through their dedicated defiant deft defences.

What follows is an utterly loathsome grotesque pungent tragic lament, bold innocent lives needlessly lost which were harmlessly playing a short time ago.

Die Brücke (The Bridge) is rather graphic as it presents the fight like a typical war film, to bluntly accentuate the ghastly carnage with lethal despondent absurdist reckoning (the horror maniacally awaiting in the realistic absurdism).

Made in post-World War II Germany (1959) to assist with what must have been an abysmal spiritual reconstruction, I'm not sure how it was received, but it still makes a shocking impact.

I'd argue it's an essential war film which makes an impact like no other, the sight of innocent children enlisted to fight as thoroughly repugnant as it is catastrophic.

Earlier in the film, some of them are so carefree and playful they have yet to form dreams for the future, preferring to play tricks with mice or critique or boast as the endless day passes by like any other.

There were many films in my youth which sought to make war seem unappealing (Jacob's Ladder, The Thin Red Line, Apocalypse Now, Platoon), as artists set about creating a peaceful aesthetic designed to stifle cultural belligerence.

Peaceful egalitarian unions backed them up while fighting racism.

Too bad they lost their hold in Russia (and elsewhere).

And gave way to vicious nationalism.