The core of the vast majority of war movies is "anti-war". They use the bloodiness of the battle, the separation of life and death between the fires of war, and the oppression and chaos under the chaos of war to show the great destruction of war on human society and the infinite magnification of the evil of human nature.
Personally, I like war movies very much, and for me living in peacetime, the cruelty of the war scenes in the movies does make me feel apathy for war. At the same time, I am also thinking: in addition to directly describing the cruelty of war, there is no other way to express the position of "anti-war", after all, although the war scenes are different, but if the core is the same, it is really easy to aesthetic fatigue if it is too much.
So when someone recommended "Archimedes" to me, I was always looking forward to the film.
Let's briefly summarize the plot outline of the "Archimedes War".
Before the start of World War II, the Japanese Navy was divided into "battleship faction" and "aircraft carrier faction".
The battleship faction embraced the traditional doctrine of large ships and guns, believing that battleships with larger tonnage and larger gun calibers should be built (by the way, World War I was the glorious era of battleships, especially the "Battle of Jutland" between Britain and Germany, which was most famous for the "Battle of Jutland", in which both sides used the cannons of giant ships to fire at each other, and in front of the huge battleships, other smaller tonnage cruisers and destroyers were simply vulnerable).
The aircraft carrier faction believes that aircraft will be the main force in future operations, so more aircraft carriers should be built that can carry fighters on the water to carry out long-range strikes (incidentally, the power of aircraft carriers in World War II did prove the power of aircraft carriers, such as the "Doolittle Air Raid" of the United States sneaking attack on Japan, that is, to let the aircraft carrier carry bombers and take off on the ocean 1200 kilometers away from Japan, killing Japan a surprise and giving a strong shock, and the naval battles of World War II are basically naval battles that are "beyond the visual distance", That is to say, both sides are sending air forces to pinch each other, and then whoever is stronger has a better chance of attacking enemy ships from a high altitude, and the navies of both sides actually have little chance of actually seeing each other's ships).
Although we look at it from the perspective of God in hindsight, of course, we want to develop aircraft carriers, but the key is... Most people at the time were unaware of this "possible" new trend (note what I just said, the big ship cannon doctrine was proven successful in World War I, and before the start of World War II, almost no one used aircraft carriers to fight key victory battles, in other words, aircraft carriers were actually the product of uncertainty in the eyes of people at the time).
Due to Japan's limited defense budget, the navy's top brass decided to choose between the "battleship faction" and the "aircraft carrier faction" to develop first, at which time the battleship faction came up with an imposing plan to build the largest super-large battleship in human history! (And this super-large battleship will take an extremely loud name: Yamato.) )
Isoroku Yamamoto, who wanted to develop an aircraft carrier, was thinking hard about how to prevent the construction of super-large battleships, and happened to meet the male protagonist of the genius mathematician, so he asked the male protagonist to calculate in a mathematical way that the super-large battleship exceeded the budget, so that the construction plan was canceled, so the male protagonist embarked on an anti-war road that used mathematics to prevent the construction of battleships, and even tried to prevent Japan from moving more towards war...
Next, I want to talk about my sharing of this film, such as: the birth of the world's largest Yamato ship, the defeat of the Japanese Navy, which is almost common sense, so the historical film actually has a fixed ending at the beginning of the thunderstorm state. This has also become a test of historical cinema: how to make the audience highly involved in the film even if the ending is known. This key is done well, it is usually a classic with full charm, and if it is not passed, it becomes a running account that makes people want to doze off.
Looking back, why I was attracted to this film, deducting the high-energy Yamato battle scene at the beginning of this film, this film does not have any war scenes, so most of the time this film has to tell the anti-war concept without presenting the war.
When I watched this film, I found that this film is not generally complex in anti-war thinking and character descriptions.
First of all, the protagonist's anti-war angle is relatively simple, that is, "war will bring destruction, war construction will hinder the development of civilian society, so it is necessary to oppose war", so the protagonist desperately uses absolutely correct numbers to prove.
But the equally anti-war Yamamoto Isoroku was very complicated, he believed that "going to war with the powerful United States, there is almost no hope of victory, so it should avoid war", but when it is necessary to fight, Yamamoto will do everything in the battle, increasing the possibility of victory, so that he later developed a strategy of "sneaking into the US Navy". In other words, Yamamoto was not entirely opposed to war, but to war with no chance of victory. (One sentence aside, Japan usually had little problem with attacking a weak China, at best dividing it into "limited war" and "all-out war" factions.) Yamamoto's concept is also a more fashionable proposition of the Japanese right, that is, they believe that there is nothing wrong with war, but that the country fights a war that has a low chance of winning and eventually loses.
In addition, I mentioned earlier that the Yamato ship was eventually built, so did the protagonist lose? No, there are many layers of reversals, which is one of the highlights of this film, until the last moment, all kinds of complex and subversive thinking continues to appear, which also shows the complexity of the character who should be the opposite of the film, the advocate of Yamato ship construction, Lieutenant General Hirayama Shipbuilding. Unlike several monotonous villains in the film, Lieutenant General Hirayama's reasons for building ships are very deep, and he is also very capable of speaking well, and has the persistence of the spirit of a professional, which makes me not hate this character who stands on the opposite side of the protagonist, but feels that he is deeply charming.
The more I saw the end of this film, it really made me feel that "people are very complicated". Even if the protagonist types out absolutely correct and rational numbers (incidentally, it has been said that "mathematics is fundamentally different from other disciplines, that is, other disciplines have a gray area that is difficult to explain, but only mathematics is absolute, it has only two results: right and wrong." But people always have all sorts of different reasons or expressions to try to articulate their claims, and in the end even to the point of absurdity.
But this is a very real portrayal, like war, almost most people know and agree that war is not good, so why has war never stopped in human history? Even many times, human beings are willing to go to war (as mentioned in the movie, a large part of the Japanese people are very enthusiastic about the response to war under the initiative of rich countries and strong soldiers).
Finally, when I went to the movies that day, I was actually quite tired, and I was a little worried about whether I would fall asleep after seeing half of it. But the film's smooth rhythm and clear goals made my process very relaxed. Personally, I think that even if you are not a lover of history, this film has considerable entertainment to attract the attention of the audience.
Especially when I saw the model of the Yamato ship, even though I knew that the aircraft carrier was the real main force of the World War II navy, and the Yamato ship was even more lackluster due to overprotective results, I still instantly felt that the beauty of the giant guns of the big ships in it provoked my blood. But at the same time, for the history and background of the Yamato ship, it is also full of emotions and sighs.
May we finally learn from past losses and translate them into the experiences and gains of our present generations.