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A young American
soldier stationed in France in World
War II comes face to face with the enemy and the inhumanity of war.
JJ, an
inexperienced American soldier stationed in
France in WW2, guards a river crossing with Private Fry and Sergeant
Wilkes,
two seasoned older soldiers. JJ asks Wilkes some philosophical
questions
about Germans, to which Wilkes replies that in war it's kill or be
killed;
there's no time to think about the enemy as human. JJ goes into a
nearby
forest to relieve himself, where he stumbles upon a German soldier
alone in the forest. JJ is about to discover if Sergeant Wilkes
was right about the nature of the Enemy...
"No matter how we may think we would react, we can never really know what we would do until we've locked eyes across the barrel of a gun."
The inspiration for this film comes from a discussion about what happens when someone goes against what's expected of him. The ultimate example in the most extreme situation is a soldier, whose main duty in a time of war is to kill the enemy. We are brought up to believe that killing is murder, the worst crime one can commit. Yet in times of war, much effort is put into dehumanizing the enemy, to deprogram ordinary citizens into making a "moral exception" to killing in this particular situation.
It made sense to set this film in WW2, because the "good" and "bad" sides of this war were very clear; it's less ambiguous than the colonial wars fought before it, or the political wars fought since then. Everybody agrees that the Nazis were rather classic villains. An American liberator facing a German invader in France doesn't have a clear reason not to follow orders and kill the enemy on sight. No reason, that is, outside of an individual's personality.
No matter how we may think we would react, we can never really know what we would do until we're face to face with the enemy, locking eyes across the barrel of a gun. Those of us who believe ourselves capable of it might find that we freeze, finger on the trigger, unable to shoot. And those of us who believe ourselves incapable of it might find ourselves to be more bloodthirsty than we would like to imagine.
-Lee F. Sullivan, director
