Harrison's Flowers

Harrison's Flowers
by Élie Chouraqui

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Movie Reviews of Harrison's Flowers

Movie Review: This Film Tells the Truth About War
Summary: 5 Stars

I liked this movie because I am a Viet nam vet that fought in Tet and therefore I have some considerable experience with war in a city, or as the Army used to call it War in a Built Up Area. If you have actually seen this kind of war, the movie is frighteningly accurate and like war, necessisarily fragmentary and incomplete.

For example, in one perfect and horrific, scene Andie MacDowell and her two journalist companions are moving through a city to find a hospital where her husband may be. They come upon a situation: a young child, probably a girl runs out of a building in front of them. A soldier follows her out of the building, and kills her. War's brutality? Certainly. A killing mad soldier, killing an innocent child. Possibly. But, even more likely, the scene represents wars brutality on multiple levels. If you knew that the child had just thrown a hand grenade and the soldier escaped it but his buddy, or even more likely in this kind of war, his actual brother did not would that change the nature of the scene for you? Or, if that was true and you knew that the child had another hand grenade, or a pistol, would that change your impression of the meaning of the scene? And how about that soldier many years later as he looks down at his own child, assuming he survives the war, will he be able to forget the look on that other chid's face as he shot her? However good his reason and in real war there are many reasons that can make such an act necessary, will he be able to forget, or will it haunt him. This kind of awful situation, but not unusual situation, is precisely why William T. Sherman said that "War is Hell." For a soldier, having killed a child for any reason must be true Hell, but to have done it on purpose. That would be worse. While I avoided shooting at children, the reality of war among civilians is worse than you could ever imagine even in a nightmare. Say you are a sentry and there is a car speeding toward your post. You open fire. The car stops. Your post is safe. But it turns out that a child is dead. The car was speeding to get to the hospital. That is war in the city and all you have is an instant to make up your mind to shoot, or not to shoot. To kill, or not to kill, and either way to live with the aftermath.

Do the sailors or Marines on watch on the USS Cole wished that they had fired. Even if their orders were not to fire. Even if the approach of the boat with a bomb in it did not look like an attack. Even if a child had been steering the boat with a bomb. I have no doubt that they all wished that they had fired. And they will wish that, and relive that, until they too die. In that sense they are as much causalities of war as their shipmates that suffered actual physical hurt. The Captain of that ship, the Officer of the Day, the Watch officer all will relive and replay that day and regret that no one fired soon or often enough. Watch this movie and you will see what I mean. There are things that happen in war that are horrible, to everybody.

I have seen war and I have seen many war movies - but only rarely have I seen a movie as true to the appalling core of the experience as this is. As our soldiers fight a shadow war in Iraq and in Afghanistan it would be good to remember that war is hell. If you have forgotten, this is a very accurate picture of it.

Yes, the plot is a tad implausible, but I would hope that the wife that my son chooses when he grows up would do as Andie MacDowell's fictional character does and fight to find out what happened to him. I know my wife would.