Hear Hear! The Brits frakked up a lot of people for over 200 years.
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Hancock_the_Superb — 12 years ago(May 26, 2013 07:02 AM)
I think the movie's too garbled to have a really effective message.
On the one hand, it definitely has a modern PC sensibility: war is bad, imperialism is wrong, etc. The changes to the narrative definitely point up this impression: Harry admits he's a coward from the word go. The film takes during the doomed Nile Expedition rather than Kitchener's Omdurman expedition, presumably to cement the anti-war message. Worst of all, Harry achieves very little, barely managing to rescue his friends and even that only with Abu's help.
On the other, it's very retrograde in showing Sudanese as either mindless, murderous fanatics (the Mahdists) or servile supplicants (Abu, who's given no real reason for helping Harry at all). Arguably more than the '39 version, as evinced by one odd change: Harry's Sudanese contact is no longer a charming, educated Arab doctor. Here he's a brutal, double-dealing slave trader. Politically correct?
The result is a very confused movie that tries to appeal to both fans of old fashioned adventures and modern viewers, and fails dismally at both approaches.
"Do you know what lies at the bottom of the mainstream? Mediocrity!" -
Johnny-Cakes — 12 years ago(August 26, 2013 03:11 PM)
Lol. I stopped reading when you tried to justify empires and imperial rule. If I rape you, even if I do it politely, you've still been raped. If I murder you with the best of intentions, you've still been murdered. I don't remember this movie in the least, because it is forgettable, not because, as some believe, the director had an agenda, mostly bc a director has to have an agenda, or else they produce garbage which lacks any impact. (Its obviously impacted you fools enough to have come here to complain about it) That being said, empires have always fallen bc man inevitably will refuse to submit to anyone else's rule, and for you to try to justify the lawfulness of ruling human beings by saying the British were the nicest empire is absurd, criminally short-sited, and simply ignorant. It's amazing how the concept of free will is implicitly a liberal one when viewed by ignorant, hateful conservatives, as if their Jesus, their god, had been conveniently forgotten by them in the times when he is most needed.
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naseby — 12 years ago(September 17, 2013 07:42 AM)
The ins-and outs of it seem to be, that yes, Britain's empire WAS wrong, but it's okay for their so-called subjects to go around killing 'each other'! My personal point in this matter is that of course it was wrong, and that some of these subjects seem to rightly, oppose the empire, but when their countrymen join up the British army in droves, it's forgotten.
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Mosho_Smith — 12 years ago(December 30, 2013 06:00 PM)
For some reason I'm still a little surprised at the anti-British sentiments being regurgitated over this film. The British were the only ones responsible from screwing over Africa? Right, of course, in this particular rewriting of history, the Dutch were never there, nor were the Portuguese, the French, the Belgians only the British. Sure.
As for Ireland, there are many who still believe, even now, that it would be impossible to accept anyone as being Irish if they are not Catholic, even though they have lived their all their lives and can trace their family as having lived there for over a hundred and more years. This certainly does not excuse the brutality of the black and tans or Bloody Sunday or other atrocities committed by the British in Ireland, but please let's not pretend that this brutality was entirely one-sided.
What I did find intriguing about this film was the sense of idealism that the young men had at the start was ground out of them by a very different culture and a very unforgiving environment. I suppose that it was part of the very linear military mindset to never take into account cultural and environmental factors into account, though that thinking may be very different today, depending on which army you're talking about.
It's true that there are some issues in the film that are not dealt with in the book, and vice versa. It's not surprising when you consider that this film was made a hundred years after the book was written. Audiences have changed - in the CNN age, are we really expected to be satiated by a simple story of derring-do? This film is an adaption that is based on the book; yet a different take on an old story. And tastes change; it wouldn't surprise me if ten, twenty years from now, the very same people who mock this film will hail it as a forgotten gem and a masterpiece. The truth is somewhere inbetween. -
TheSpiritOfTheTimes — 11 years ago(October 26, 2014 01:27 PM)
A reminder for all reasonable people; there is absolutely no link between how internally free a society is and how it treats others under its boot.
Britain was arguably the freest society in the 19th century, but the atrocities it committed just in India, for example, would make the Nazis cringe.
Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries. -
seekingallthetime — 9 years ago(June 25, 2016 04:25 AM)
the Brits did it mostly with a pen."
I wonder what type of history you are student of.
In India, when Muslims and Hindus combined, rebelled against the total occupation of British, they were brutally slaughtered, this even was called "ghadar 1857" and there are many books on it. The heads of the 2 sons of the last Mughal emperor of India (shah Zafar) were cut and presented to him in a tray, and the emperor was life prisoned in Rangoon. Thousands of Indian were killed in 1 day. They attack other Indian States like Maysoor with heavy artillery of those days, killed thousands and thousands in battlefields and hundreds were killed by firing squads, the emperors of those stated were killed e.g., Fateh Ali Tippo od Maysoor, whose head was cut down and exhibited.
The British left simply because they were asked? in dreamsland only. When Indians Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs etc) were failed in armed rebellion, they started political movements, and their luck, Europe especially Britian had been destroyed by the World War II, and Gandhi had started the famous Civil Disobedience Movement, British were forced to leave simply because they became weak and were afraid of a violent armed struggle, the whole india was against them and a number of movements against British were rising.
The British were gentle? oh come on, the better way to say this is that the British killed less as compared to spanish who killed thousands innocent native people of America, as did other European nations did. I agree with it.
Compare the Brits to the Mongols.. what an idiotic comparison, you compare near past events with 1.5 thousand year old barbarism?. Compare them with French which did less massacre than done by the British.
Brits did it mostly with a pen. what? they trade pens? they occupied with cleverly planned attacks, they came India for trade and disguise their army as traders, then silently attacked from the back, keep admiring pen.
I can give you hundreds more example of how British conquered India, but hope you will learn something, every conqueror's hand is blooded with thousands of innocent people. -
dorseybelle — 9 years ago(September 23, 2016 03:58 PM)
I'm sorry, but I didn't want to get into the politics and all. Can you explain to me what happened at the end? Did Ethne go back to Harry or not? If so, what happened to Rickie Fitts?
Thanks!!!!
She did it! She did it! The lady with the grape!