Exploration 7

I really enjoyed this film and thought it was a good wrap up after reading The Things They Carried. I thought it was good to see a film tapped in the "real deal". No blurred out things, no beeps for cursing, just the real deal. I enjoyed how they interviewed a few of the soldiers after the recording and got their direct thoughts about the war after they had been sent back home. I thought this was good to see how they were feeling once they made it back home. I could relate many of the soldiers to Norman Bowker in the sense that they were confused on what to do with their lives after being home. Luckily the soldiers in the film seemed a lot happier and hopefully weren't suffering any post war depression like Bowker. My most memorable part of the film was when one of the soldiers said he was taking 4 to 5 sleeping pills a night in order to be able to fall asleep. He said that all the visions of war enable him to be capable of resting and clearing his mind enough to fall asleep. I thought this was a very powerful quote because you don't think about how hard it would be to fall asleep in an environment like that. They never knew exactly what was going on around them and that had to be such an uneasy feeling. I think about lying in my own bed at night knowing that I am safe and everything quite around me. I can't imagine falling asleep in a dark unfamiliar place. The soldiers had no choice though which is why I'm sure a lot of them were on sleep medication. They had to get rest somehow for the next days attack. I would definitely recommend this film to my friends and family. I think they would really appreciate seeing this film and understanding a little more clearly what a real war situation is like and some of the emotion struggles the men went through similar to the ones the soldiers went through in The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien.