Kokoda Front Line

The 9 minute segment of the film was based on Australia's battle with Japan on New Guinea. The short film accurately explains and vividly shows the supply dropped by planes, the artillery used, the military in the field, and the bushmen in New Guinea. I enjoyed how the narration tells about war - in the words "Man versus Man". The statement is quite bold, precise, and true. The views of war scenes are giving me a historical enlightenment yet at the same time I feel unconscious and lying in unknown ditches.

Throughout my media history from television shows and films, I cannot comprehend and put in the reality of these scenes. Although I'm aware of our histories within our civilizations, I almost put a layer of "movie sets" onto what has happen in the past. Does the view equate that I'm a futuristic idealist or an actor within my own domain and leaving out erroneous parts? Can I be whole in matters of what has been conquered or protected in the past? I believe that I will learn in a partial ordeal. I will not know the effects of war unless I have all my senses in the moment. I ask myself, "Should I place myself in a war to know war?" I say, "Yes." Experience is the key for existence.

I appreciate the narrator/filmmaker was an actual character or a real person in action. The beauty of the film was his own persona and non-fiction storytelling through the lens and recordings. Although he greatly shown the battle, there is a void, well, maybe, a filler which a viewer grasp the events of the war. Yet at the same time, one cannot smell, touch, or side against the vegetation, the sweat, blood, mud, screams, commands, triggers, gunpowder, and the hurt of the boots. One can describe scene by scene; but one cannot duplicate the instantaneous moment. One must think; in order to achieve what is on film; one must go into the world for himself or herself. The question is "Will I experience war or merely sit and watch what war was and is now?" My answer is: "I cannot have peace if I never been to war." Overall, the film implanted an active thought with an action.