JAFARECToday I watched “Midway” directed by Roland Emmerich. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen Cinema. Last time was “Grand Journey”, which was also based on a true story and I enjoyed it enough.
This time around, Midway is almost entirely based on history, recreating the facts in chronological order without exaggeration or distortion.I take my hat off to the reality of how the images were presented. The way the film does not talk about good and evil, but rather depicts the war in a straightforward manner is brilliant.
Every soldier, officer, and their family members are caught up in the war, and sometimes they are forced to go through a harrowing experience, but is it possible to not get caught up in that history? The madness of war probably won’t allow it. What each of us can do, ideally, is to create a regime that allows for policies that should not only protect the nation and its people through the channels of diplomacy, but also protect peace and human rights in the world before the nation chooses to go to war. In the real world, state power sacrifices its people for its own reasons, using war as a means of doing so, and the people are inevitably involved.
What can we achieve in such a reality? The only thing we can do is to avoid getting involved as much as possible…and even if we do, we can only defend ourselves so that no harm will come to us.
The current government… If you look at the history of the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan’s conservative government, you will see the sad reality that if you trust the government, your life and livelihood will be squeezed out of you. Income levels are down, wealth distribution is declining, and inequality is only growing. This is the worst among the countries that have advanced economies.
And the corona mess is the last thing to hit Japan. The current government, by fomenting a corona pandemic, seems to have a lot to do. I don’t think the current government wants war, but the fact is that the finance capital that runs the world has been using war as a tool for its interests. Governments may have become nothing more than pawns in the hands of that financial capital.
In the face of this reality…what can each of us do to help…I enjoy Midway, but I fear for the world ahead. I’ll say it again. No time for masks!
By the way, when I entered the theater at the last minute, there were only front row seats left, I had no choice but to buy them. However, the second and third rows were also pretty empty. Oh, we’ll have to wait until tomorrow to release the seats! Besides, the staff asked me to wear a mask, but I said yes and went in without a mask, of course.
Originally posted on September 14, 2020
English text translated with DeepL (Japanese to English) and checked by Mina.
