Film · Prime Video · 2016

Hacksaw Ridge

Keep the medic. The battle is more gruesome than the conscience needs. Adults, and not for spectacle.

Doss's refusal is particular and religious, and the film does not sand it into a generic pacifism. The army's attempt to break him is the first fight, and his marriage and his drunken father are part of the formation, not a prologue to skip. Then the ridge is a slaughter photographed at a length that starts to enjoy its own hell. The desk keeps the man and warns the camera. Saving seventy men one at a time is the picture. You do not need every wound to believe it.

If you watch, watch for the prayer and the lowering. Look away when the film confuses witness with indulgence.

The eight

Industry
8/10
A medic's repetitive, physical work.
Household
6/10
A hard father, a wife, a vow.
Piety
8/10
Faith that costs a rank and a rifle.
Courage
10/10
He stays on the ridge.
Republic
7/10
An army that does not know what to do with a conscience.
Temperance
5/10
The film itself does not always look away.
Truth
7/10
His limit is told truly.
Stewardship
8/10
The heirloom is the man who would not leave the wounded.

Live historicallyFind a way to stay with the hurt that does not require you to become the harm.

Film · Prime Video · 2006

Charlotte's Web

Friendship, a farm, and a death that is not a betrayal. One of the true ones.

Wilbur is a spring pig, which means he is scheduled to die, and Charlotte spends her silk to stop it. She succeeds. She also dies, because that is what spiders do, and the film does not cheat this into a reunion. Fern grows up and starts to look away from the barn, which is also true, and also a grief.

E. B. White's story is one of the few that trusts a child with mortality without using it as a thrill. Watch this version for that trust. The famous words in the web are not marketing. They are a friend spending her life.

The eight

Industry
7/10
A farm with chores, a fair, a spider's actual craft.
Household
8/10
Fern, a pig, a barn household. Growing up pulls her toward the boy and away from the pen.
Piety
5/10
No sermon. A created order in which things die.
Courage
8/10
Charlotte works until she is done. Wilbur keeps the egg sac.
Republic
6/10
A fair, a farm, a community that will kill a pig without malice.
Temperance
7/10
Appetite is the farmer's calendar. Friendship interrupts it once.
Truth
9/10
Death is not softened into a nap.
Stewardship
9/10
She saves him and leaves him her children. That is the whole charge.

Live historicallyTell a child the truth about a good thing that does not last, and do not rush past it.