Mid-day Marauder

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It is what it is.
Tarkovsky
 Assad vows end to the violence in Syria. In all likelihood, with more violence. 
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‘Let everything that’s been planned come true. Let them believe. And let them have a laugh at their passions. Because what they call passion actually is not some emotional energy, but just the friction between their souls and the outside world. And most important, let them believe in themselves. Let them be helpless like children, because weakness is a great thing, and strength is nothing. When a man is just born, he is weak and flexible. When he dies, he is hard and insensitive. When a tree is growing, it’s tender and pliant. But when it’s dry and hard, it dies. Hardness and strength are death’s companions. Pliancy and weakness are expressions of the freshness of being. Because what has hardened will never win.’ Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979)
Come and See (Elem Klimov, 1985) I have to write something about this movie. I saw it in my teenage years and it literally scarred me like no other film ever has. The director, Elem Klimov, created a vision so horrifying, realistic, and disturbing that he simply quit directing films as he believed he had breached the limitations of the medium. No film has ever depicted the stark brutality of war with such unflinching realism. The film follows a Belorussian boy named Florya who witnesses the horrors of operation Barbarossa and the Eastern Front. The actor who plays Florya, Alexsey Kravchenko, actually ages before your eyes due to his experiences as the film goes along. Over 30 million people died on the Eastern Front and it often goes forgotten that the Nazi’s racial hierarchy extended to Slavic people as well. That racist barbarism and the violence that stemmed from it are depicted about as nonchalantly as it probably occurred. The decision to portray it so plainly makes it that much worse. This film is essentially the evil that men do, to cop a phrase. Regardless of how difficult this film is to watch, it is required viewing. I remember feeling sick and in desperate need of a shower after my first viewing, but this may well be one of the most important and best films ever made. It transcends the medium.