LLC Film Series – Winter 2025

Consequential Acts — The Soldier’s Encounter with War 
January 9, 16, 23, 30, February 6

As in our previous series, we have again sought films that benefit from being watched in a group; films that ask for our collective experiences, concerns, observations, and questions; films that are discussible.  We want to offer you films that speak to our human stories and films that are themselves rich, intricate, and formally creative. 

As we prepared by watching films whose topic was war, we gradually moved away from the usual war movies, though there is much to appreciate in them and, of course, Hollywood likes to make them for their narratives of heroism, their plots of pain and glory, the violence that can actively summon our emotions, and the roles they can offer actors.  We are aware that the war ‘plot’ calls for an enemy, and that too we have pushed against, so that we go beyond our American eyes into the experiences of other soldiers. 

Our thematic focus is on what war presents to soldiers, who are always both victims and perpetrators, who experience ‘consequential’ acts as they are asked to kill and to confront death.  Our selection of films includes Vietnam, Afghanistan, the Middle East (one from Israel, one Palestine, one Syria).  There is a large screen film, an animated film, a film from behind walls, one documentary investigating a historical event, and one documentary that gives us an unmediated encounter with the events created by war as they happen.  Each of the films offers us a chance to see the soldier, the society around him, and the war. 

Here they are, in order of our viewing schedule: Full Metal Jacket (1987), Waltz with Bashir (2008), Paradise Now (2005), The Tillman Story (2010), Last Men in Aleppo (2017). 

War is a consequential act.  We are a generation that stretches from WW II through the Korean War, Vietnam, Iraq I and II, Afghanistan, and now observes war again in the Ukraine and the Middle East.  Europe’s foundational literary work is Homer’s epic poem about the Trojan War, The Iliad.  Even for Homer, the story was the story of the soldier and the complex connection between the soldier and the culture that frames him. 

As with the previous film series, each week we will provide background information about the film as well as a set of questions for you to consider as you join other LLC members in watching it.  We will give fair warning about violence. 

We look forward to seeing you in January. You can reserve your seat any time before Jan. 2 at this link. Space will be limited to the seats in room 140 at The Point. 

Alison Prindle and Paul Eisenstein