It is difficult to imagine a more visually stunning film than this one. The landscapes and skies are beyond beauty, and the massive battle scenes dwarf anything I've ever seen, even perhaps Bondarchuk's "War and Peace." This is one of the first films I've seen that conveys a believable sense of thousands (rather than hundreds or dozens) of soldiers in simultaneous combat, and the color-coded armies are both amazing to consider as fighting entities and astonishing to watch as masses of moving color and light. The final half hour is one of the most amazing feats of logistics and color ever put to film. Now if only there were a story worth following. Basically, there are two armies and the two armies fight or pursue each other. There is a minor attempt at personalizing the leaders of each army, but it all seems merely a formality, and a very unsuccessful one. There are no characters such as found in the great war movies, either in small films like "A Walk in the Sun" and "Nobi" ("Fires on the Plain") or in epics like "Ran" or "The Longest Day" or "Lawrence of Arabia." No, we're just told (I repeat told; I refer to the English-narrated version) that these people have enmity one for the other and that there is reason for battle. Then we watch the battles (or more often, the planning sessions). When battle comes, it is spectacular beyond expectation. But in the end, no one, not even the filmmakers it seems, cares who won or whether anyone did.
Review of Heaven and Earth
