‘There’s no such thing as a period film’

Rick McGinnis on war movies:

The characters we’ll see onscreen in The Pacific – real-life soldiers such as Eugene Sledge, and Medal of Honor winner John Basilone – would be around 90 today if they’re still alive, but I’m under no illusion that the actors playing them will resemble the actual men as much as they’ll be deputized vessels for our own agonies and misgivings about Iraq and Afghanistan.

To paraphrase another cliché, the great tragedy of our creative class is that, onscreen at least, they’re never fighting our last war.