1. The balance and contradiction of the three law enforcement forces
At the end of World War II, Germany's corruption was evident and its military discipline was corrupted. However, Germany organized a strong force to maintain military discipline, and also established prisons, where deserters were tried and disposed of according to strict legal procedures.
There are three main forces with power on this issue. The first is the military police who hunt deserters in the wild to maintain order, the second is the stormtroopers organized by the party and the masses to guard the prison, and the third is the judicial organs responsible for supervising the prison.
The most powerful of these three forces are the military police, who are regular troops. However, they have to deal with deserters because of their heavy business. I wish the deserters resisted arrest and shot them all. Unfortunately, after all, deserters only want to survive and not revolutionize. Because of the care of my compatriots, I can only bring people back and hand them over to the prison. Although this kind of work is definitely enjoyable, the work itself is unpleasant.
The second strongest are the stormtroopers equipped with simple weapons. The strength of these people is mainly patriotic enthusiasm. They will give you an outline at every turn. They will regard all those who do not contribute to the motherland but hold them back as dung, and hand over the periphery of the prison to them. It can be said to save effort. This group of people has been eyeing the prison all the time, and they are very dissatisfied with the fact that they are full of patriotic blood and have arranged for a janitor to work.
The weakest but the most powerful is the judiciary. It is conceivable that everything in this agency must be subject to official documents. If there is no official document, it is not necessary to work. Due to the busyness of other official duties, the top has not been able to file documents, but the power of life and death of deserters in prison is precisely in the hands of these scholars who have neither force nor will.
Those who want to kill outside the door can't be killed, and those who are responsible for killing people inside the door not only do not kill but also have to constantly ask for funds to support the people who want to kill. Although the purpose of the system design between these three forces is to make them perform their own duties , and cooperate in an orderly manner, but from this distribution, the contradictions between them must be disdainful of each other. When it comes to daily affairs, the judiciary finds the gendarmerie and stormtroopers to be vulgar and barbarous, and the stormtroopers find the judiciary to be hypocritical and shameful. There is quite a sense of sight that the common people now scold lawyers for not being good birds, and lawyers scold the common people for not understanding the law.
There are two keys here:
1. The premise of such a cumbersome procedure is that these deserters are still Germans after all, and they are innocent without trial, which is a concern for their compatriots.
2. But everyone no longer regards these people as human beings. It's just because of the issue of "who will be held responsible for violating procedures", the three units that should have cooperated efficiently formed a deadlock.
At this time, the gods descended from the sky, and this deadlock was like being slashed by Paoding's knife, and hundreds of deserters became the decomposed cattle.
2. Harold is a key
The protagonist Harold is an ordinary deserter. On the way to escape, he picked up a captain's uniform, a military vehicle and an honest driver. In order to survive, he first pretended to be a captain, but he found that in Germany at this time, the identity of an officer has been changed. It's worthless. In the eyes of the common people, if you can't eat them, they will eat you. Great wisdom is needed in the face of disasters. He quickly gave him a position. Let's call it the special commissioner of the head of state's secret order to rectify military discipline. He is still picking it up on the road. He recruited several deserters and formed a special supervision group whose duty was to investigate the problems and losses caused to the grassroots by the corruption of military discipline. Soon, he met a military police officer who really rectified military discipline. At the critical moment, he gave himself another level, and his responsibilities were expanded to deal with the problem of military discipline corruption. to the prison to assist him in his work.
The benevolent sees benevolence, I am a bureaucrat, and all I see are bureaucrats, so I no longer think about the so-called evil of human nature in the film. What I mainly talk about here is how such a bureaucratic system transforms the evil in people's consciousness into material evil. . Therefore, the 55 minutes to 62 minutes of the film is the essence of this film in my opinion.
Harold killed 5 people in prison, trying to make it real once and for all by making the fake real. But this kind of behavior violated the authority of the judiciary after all, and the head of the judiciary in the prison questioned Harold. In this conversation, the judiciary did not recognize the head of state that Harold kept his mouth shut. They recognized the official document, otherwise they would ask the higher authorities to investigate you. Harold's psychological defense line almost collapsed. But the powerless stormtroopers didn't want to give up this thigh that fell from the sky, and he also went to his superiors, a force that surpassed all forces in the film - the Nazi party and his secret service, the Gestapo. The Gestapo didn't care who Harold was, and they just waited for someone to do their work and take responsibility. In this way, a few phone calls between the leaders, the principle conflicts, legal dilemmas, and daily conflicts of the people below are all resolved. The gendarmerie escaped early. Although the judiciary is aggrieved, you still dare to fight the Gestapo? The stormtroopers want to kill people, let's go, we don't need to be out and we don't need to take responsibility, why not do it? Also in line with the program!
It turned out that the title I thought of for this article was tiger skin, abacus and blood. I thought at the time that this tragedy was caused by people's extreme worship and fear of the head of state's tiger skin, as well as the small calculus of middle-level officials for self-protection, and some mass organizations composed of ordinary people under extreme social conditions. The morbid blood inspired by patriotic misinterpretation breaks a relationship that was originally checked and balanced, and people's evil thoughts pour out like a flood.
However, Harold's acting skills are perfect, but unfortunately the hardware conditions are not up to standard. He is short in stature, the captain's uniform he picked up is too big for his shoulders, his trousers are dragging the floor, his face is too immature, and it is basically impossible to be so young in terms of age. Just being promoted to the position of captain, the rank of the commissioner of the head of state is only a captain, which is even more unreasonable, and the supervision team is even more outrageous. So even though he was pulling the head of the head of the tiger's skin, in fact, no one was frightened. In front of ordinary people, they finally recognized your gun. In front of other deserters, they didn't eat you because they found that they had food with you. The grassroots officers of the gendarmerie are more likely to cooperate with you in order to achieve their goal of not having to run around (even suggesting that it is time for him to perform!), after all, there is nothing to lose by cooperating with you. And the judiciary, which has really lost its power, really doesn’t buy it at all. They still have to report it to the leaders. Therefore, I think the most crucial part of the film is that the stormtroopers called the regional leaders. The district leader finds his leader again. His level of leadership is higher than the largest leader that can be contacted by the judiciary. Therefore, although Harold's acting skills are full marks, it is the administrative level that ultimately plays a role. This is actually an official. The story of the senior level crushing people to death, and the official and junior level throwing a black pot.
But there was an essential problem that this tragedy would happen in Germany at the time. Because of this essential problem, it could be said that such a thing would happen in Germany at that time. That is, it is not only the first-year official who called the grassroots here. It is an ordinary leader of the highest level, but it is larger than the three units, detached from the Nazi Party and its secret service, which is above all systems.
No matter how complicated the system design, no matter how cumbersome checks and balances of power are, as long as there is a point of intersection, whether it is the military police who don't want to do things or the stormtroopers who want to do "real things", as long as they can get in touch with the possibility of reaching this point of intersection, even if This may be known to be false, and it will make a big fuss. In this case, a complete system often becomes a burden that drags down the cadres and the masses. That is why in this case, the more complete the system, the more eager people are for privileges.
So Harold can't be said to be the most critical figure in the whole incident, although without his acting skills, it will definitely not be possible. But thinking of many political movements in history, those junior high school students and high school students actually played the role of Harold. If they were all blamed for their brainless enthusiasm, it would be a bit of a blame game. It really promoted the development of the whole situation. Or perhaps those bureaucrats under certain historical and social conditions. So does bureaucracy really do nothing but inefficiency? No, bureaucracy can really kill people in a totalitarian society.
3. Some other ideas
I believe that most of the atrocities in Germany in World War II that you have come into contact with are aimed at minorities such as Jews, foreign prisoners, people they consider unhealthy, and dissidents. But in this film, the victim is already the so-called pure-bred German himself. On the surface, it was because these Germans violated military discipline, lost their combat effectiveness, undermined social order, and became criminals. In the face of criminals, regardless of race, political opinions, or physical condition, they should all be punished. But to explore in detail, this is actually the inevitable result of the ever-shrinking living space in Germany at that time. Back then, the slaughter of ethnic minorities was to gain a living space. Now these people are all dead, and the living space is still shrinking. The cake is not enough, so they can only eat their own people. Military discipline is just a reason, you see Later in Berlin, weren't there many people who were hanged as traitors because of their "unsteady will to resist"?
In the past two days, I happened to be talking about some recent conflicting events with my friends. Combined with this movie, I came to the conclusion that if one ethnic group regards the arrival or existence of people from other ethnic groups as a threat rather than an opportunity, it must be cleaned up by cleaning other ethnic groups. To achieve self-development, in the end, when other groups are eliminated, this group will also differentiate itself. Like Jewell in "Richard Jewell's Lamentations," do you feel safe holding onto your identity as white? no, when society collapses, you are also guilty of being fat.
View more about The Captain reviews
