It's an extraordinary thing for a film like The Bridge to paint German soldiers in a sympathetic light about a decade after the war's end and to also actually make those sympathies effective. There's a defeated tone to this film, a fatalistic sense of impending doom for the Reich and its soldiers which is at first offset by the youthful energy of our protagonists. They gleefully track American and German military forces, stash liquor for their own consumption, discuss women, build boats. Their idea of military service is honorable even as it becomes clear that their country could surrender at any moment. They get drafted and greet this news with enthusiasm, as if their conscription grants them a patriotic sense of purpose. But nothing they do really matters despite how intensely they feel they are serving their country. They are assigned to protect a bridge that is scheduled for demolition, they are told by their parents and teachers and even fellow soldiers they are practically fated to die for nothing, and yet they obliviously continue to fight for a losing idea. It's not even a fair fight by the end when Americans with their tanks and soldiers begin an onslaught on a group of kids who are one day into their service. The Bridge is a very haunting antiwar film, one which brutally examines the pointless violence of war and its effect on the youth who don't know any better.
It's an extraordinary thing for a film like The Bridge to paint German soldiers in a sympathetic light about a decade after the war's end and to also actually make those sympathies effective. There's a defeated tone to this film, a fatalistic sense of impending doom for the Reich and its soldiers which is at first offset by the youthful energy of our protagonists. They gleefully track American and German military forces, stash liquor for their own consumption, discuss women, build boats. Their idea of military service is honorable even as it becomes clear that their country could surrender at any moment. They get drafted and greet this news with enthusiasm, as if their conscription grants them a patriotic sense of purpose. But nothing they do really matters despite how intensely they feel they are serving their country. They are assigned to protect a bridge that is scheduled for demolition, they are told by their parents and teachers and even fellow soldiers they are practically fated to die for nothing, and yet they obliviously continue to fight for a losing idea. It's not even a fair fight by the end when Americans with their tanks and soldiers begin an onslaught on a group of kids who are one day into their service. The Bridge is a very haunting antiwar film, one which brutally examines the pointless violence of war and its effect on the youth who don't know any better.
