This is a first rate war movie. Many points of view are presented. This is from the same story as Bridge on the River Kwai, which is almost 50 years old now.
One of the prisoners owns a bible and is actually crucified by the Japanese. No, Hollywood did not make this one. It does not demonize the Japanese either. Quite honest, emotionally compelling and thoughtfully written and passionately acted. *******

http://www.toendallwarsmovie.com/reviews.html

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0243609/

http://www.hollywoodjesus.com/to_end_all_wars.htm

After he retired from the University, Gordon founded the Christian Relief Effort for the Emancipation of Dissidents (CREED), which aimed to help and protect Christians in the then-Soviet Union and its Eastern bloc, his son said. (Click here to read the testimony of one of the tortured prisoners set free by CREED)

quote:

During a period of over one hundred days, the administration of Aiud prison tried to kill me by hunger, by cold and by terror. This was begun at a time when Nicolae Ceausescu, the chief of the communist party in Romania, was traveling all over Europe attending merry banquets offered him by presidents, kings and queens of Europe. But nothing from these banquets reached poor Lazarus.

The triumphant reception of their president convinced the guards that Ceausescu was esteemed in the Free World and precious to Romania, and therefore, anyone who didn't accept his decisions had to be killed. And I was one of those people. Their course of extermination started on July 20 and ended after November l, 1980. For ten days I was isolated in a windowless cell without air, with a jacket and a pair of pants both torn to pieces, without buttons, without a belt, and with food only once every days. In the evening a wooden board was lowered from the wall and I was allowed to rest for six hours. The remaining l8 hours I had to spend on the concrete floor of the cell. After ten days they put me back in my regular cell for two days, then isolated me again for another ten days. This game of death lasted more than one hundred days.

The guard assigned to me was the party secretary of the prison. Poisoned by communist indoctrination, he insulted me with such dirty and humiliating words that I preferred to be beaten rather than listen to his insults. Nothing was holy for him, no one was spared his insults--neither I nor my parents, nor my wife, nor my son, not my priesthood, not even God.

-----

quote:

The end message of the film is to test the viewer and ask them a question: Can you forgive your enemey and love and help them like a friend, no matter how much hurt and pain they cause you and your loved ones and to forgive them?

I suppose that�s the only way that truly decent people can ever hope to reconcile the monstrous things done to them by what would appear to them at least to be other people much like themselves. Surely there must be an overpowering sense that this is all just a misunderstanding, that no one could wish me personally such ill will, especially when they are strangers. There must be an overpowering urge (at least by some) to break through this madness that so obviously surrounds and overwhelms the other and that, rationally, one must suppose to be quite fragile and penetrable.

I�ll rent that movie if I�m feeling brave.

I'm not sure why, but all my life I have been drawn to POW and concentration camp stories. There is a triumph of the spirit and an honesty there. No time for charades. One time someone pays the coward and another time they are fierce and bold. Everyone is stripped so bare and raw that they find out in the extremity of their circumstances who they really are.

It comes down to Bushido and Christianity and Plato and Shakespeare and good old fashioned human
rottenness tested to the limit.

The Cambridge educated Japanese translator wound up becoming a Buddhist priest, and a couple of the
Scottsmen became preachers. I like that. Would Victor Frankle have written Man's Search for Meaning without the concentration camp?

C.S. Lewis said that God whispers to us in our joys, but screams through our suffering. God can be quite loud under certain circumstances.

This film inspired me. When the going gets tough,
the Spirit gets tougher.

caritas,

mm <*))))><

I'm not sure why, but all my life I have been drawn to POW and concentration camp stories. There is a triumph of the spirit and an honesty there. No time for charades. One time someone pays the coward and another time they are fierce and bold. Everyone is stripped so bare and raw that they find out in the extremity of their circumstances who they really are.

Wow. That�s such a powerful statement. I like it. I�ve certainly watched my share of POW films, MM, and that�s because I like war movies in general and have seen a lot of them. There is something about the life and death, good vs. evil struggle that is powerful and compelling. Contained in wars are also all the big questions: Why do the innocent have to suffer? Why do we so readily wreak destruction if what we really want is peace and prosperity? Why are people so susceptible to the fuhrer-princip? We might not recognize that part of the appeal of watching such movies is contained in such questions, but I believe they are.

It�s quite surprising to find dignity, humanity, character and extreme compassion within the midst of sadism and destruction. Normally this circumstance, despite the movies or the singular (although amazing and inspiring) stories, tends not to ennoble but to make us savage.

And come to think of it, there certainly is something extra compelling about POW movies. Of all the memorable movie endings, including such films as Gone with the Wind and Casablanca, I think few are as memorable as the ending of The Great Escape. And I�m sure you�ve seen the fairly recent POW movie withBruce Willis called Hart's War. That was a good one.

C.S. Lewis said that God whispers to us in our joys, but screams through our suffering. God can be quite loud under certain circumstances.

That might be so. I think what watching a war film does it that it makes it very hard for our present ideas about just about anything to be contained by what we see. And then you hear stories from some soldiers who, when in mortal peril, relate that they felt more alive then they ever had before. Life through death? Is this possible? And can a truly good God allow such carnage, particularly carnage to children? So many questions arise. Do we feel safer in our mortality by watching others face peril? Is that the secret behind the apparently insane need of people to slow down and gawk at a roadside accident?

Our poor minds find it hard to contain all these thoughts. Maybe watching these movies helps us sort this all out.