The Forgotten

What happens after a battle?

Where are the villagers, whose lives were raped, scavenging what they can off dead soldiers? Where are the nomads who follow armies to cook and offer baths? Who picks over the spoils?

So many secret lives that no film maker has ever imagined in their need for a hero story. It's only getting worse with the comic stories and man-boy jizz explosions. I've quit watching movies. No one shows the lives of the bitter concierge anymore. How about the tweener girls who aren't refining their whore skills living at the mall? I imagine there were always girls meeting in the woods around a stump, in an abandoned building, somewhere to build their shrines and concoct frightening languages and myths.

We're totally in a chicken-egg situation here. When did the little lives with variables disappear? Who caused it? It could be a natural progression in our consumerist culture that definable features are sanded smooth. So who is complaining? We all get more crap which makes us happy. We give up individual survival mechanisms to meld with the vulgar herd.
My father took me to see Polanski's Waterloo movie when I was 11 or 12.

[He doesn't deserve the father moniker, except most men I know don't. Most fathers fall backwards into it and resent it silently for the rest of their lives. I've seen few who love the role, and my suspicions rise with those.]

Anyway, we go see Bonaparte lose for the second time. The movie has this bloody reputation. I remember nothing about that. The Hessians marching over a hill to save the day, I remember. Leaders in tents wearing choleric faces. Blue uniforms. Red uniforms. Horses falling.

What I seem to remember in the last scene is peasants picking over the dead (while Nelson strolls the remains on his excellent horse delivering notable quotes.) They might not really be there in that film. It might be my fuckt head completing the picture.