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The Coup de Grace The short film, The Coup de Grace is a realistic war movie that illustrates the casualties of war. This film does not glorifies war, instead it gives a very realistic view of its aftermath. One of the many artistic techniques use in this movie is the illusion of action which is achieved by the quick movement of the camera. For example, the Captain at the beginning of his search is stationary and facing forward for a long time. As he is facing forward, the background is in motion giving a sense of action. This means that the world around him is moving on and time does not stop for no one.
Finally he moves aimlessly for a long time. This shows that to try to find someone in such a situation is not an easy task to do. He choose to do it alone even though he could have gather some soldiers to help him make the task faster if not easier. Perhaps he was afraid of the outcome and how he would handle it emotionally thus losing his bearing in front of his men. As he is searching, he is very gentle and careful went he turns the death bodies around to make a positive identification of his friend. He is giving the bodies the outmost respect even thought they are dead.
The captain finally finds his wounded best friend. He reacted in an angry and confused way. The wounded sergeant had regressed to an earlier stage of development to deal with the immense pain of his wound. Seen his friend like this made the captain remember an earlier happy time went the sergeant was free of pain and injuries. The flashback is another artistic technique use in the film.
The two friends are conversation and reminiscing their childhood. It is important to notice how yellow green the grass is in this scene compared to lather. The sergeants older bother, the major disturbs their happy conversation. The artistic technique use to do this is shown with an immediate sun spot. The sergeant gets up and renders a salute, but the captain does not salutes showing disrespect toward the major.
The major expresses his jealously and gives him his assignment adding that if the captain wished, he could give it to someone else of lesser rank. The captain retaliates by inviting the major to fight along side him. The major departs on his white horse which is an unusual color for a high ranking officer to be riding on. It makes the major an easy target to the enemy. The captain gets back to the present situation and he can not deal with what is at hand. He runs up the hill screaming and angry that he can not help his friend.
He looks around for help and no one is near. He sees the majors wounded white horse and with minimum hesitation shoots it. However, death is not instant and the horse makes and awful scream for a long time. He returns back to his dying friend takes the gun and without looking shoots, but there is no bullets left. This is very frustrating because it could had been over but now he has to try again. This time he does it the honorable way and takes his saber and cuts his hands with it first.
He is sharing the pain with his friends but he can never know how it feels unless he was in the sergeant shoes. He ceremoniously places the saber on his heart and presses down. The sergeant lifts his hand to touch his on the blade and there is and exchange of blood. As soon and the deed is done the major once again disturbs and intimate situation with a sun spot. The major had arrived with two soldiers with a stretcher and the grass around them is suddenly brown. The yellow green color grass meant life that is about to be loss, and the brown grass is death.
The ending is perfect. It is better not to know what is going to happen and keep the audience guessing.
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