This is a strong contender for the most disturbing movie I ever watched. It's an established fact that war movies do typically have disturbing imagery in them, but for me, this one makes you panic the more you think about it. It deserves to be called distressing. Based on a book written in 1939 with the same title, Johnny Got His Gun is a world war 1 film directed and written by Dalton Trumbo which involves Joe Bonham (Timothy Bottoms) fighting on the western front against the germans during the last months of the war. While retreating under savage fire one day, he hears the telltale whistle of a high explosive artillery shell whizzing in from above and takes cover in a mud crater. The shell lands practically on top of him, but he somehow survives. However, the state of his injuries are so horrific and dire they have him wishing that he didn't. All of Joe's limbs are cut off, as well as his nose, mouth and ears. He also has some strange structure of bandages over his eyes which he can't remove, so he essentially has no senses at all. He can't see, hear, taste, smell or do absolutely anything keep himself occupied. He doesn't even know if he's alive or dead. Despite this, his mind is still free, and it is all he has. In his thoughts, he travels back to his time spent with his girlfriend before he was drafted. She pleads with him not to go, saying how many people don't come back. Joe says most do, and he promises to return. Technically he did, but not in the way he wanted. There's even a part where Joe talks to Jesus Christ himself, who tells him it is almost impossible to discern reality from dreams. Another scene involves Joe running through a grassy area with lots of flowers trying to chase his girlfriend's voice. She tells Joe she is leaving him because he never really loved her. Eventually, Joe manages to talk to the nurses and people taking care of him via Morse code, and they discover he has a morbid request. Because he's unable to move or do basically anything, he wants them to make him into a kind of circus freak to be shown to audiences around america as a living symbol of how horrible war is. They tell him they can't grant this request, and Joe moves his head repeatedly, spelling out "kill me" in morse code. The people in Joe's room don't want to do this either, and decide to just leave him in his unimaginable state. A nurse tries to kill Joe when no one is watching, as she understands living like that is worse than not being alive. She's forced to stop after a man forces her to leave the room. It's at this moment Joe discovers he will be spending the rest of his existence as a living torso with no ability to move or do anything. What a truly frightening movie. This is one of few films that actually induced a slight amount of panic for me, because just witnessing Joe thrash his head around in a vain attempt to get the nurses to euthanize him is just too horrible to watch. He has no option but to keep living, if it can be called living. The acting is good, even if we don't really get to see much of it because the film keeps cutting back to Joe in his hospital bed. Lots of people only seem to know this movie exists because of Metallica, whose black and white music video for the song "One" features scenes from this movie. I hope that video inspired more people to take a look at this, because it is worth it. It really does illustrate how war being so terrible is a good thing, or else people would become too fond of it. Right after it was released, this movie was quickly forgotten, which I suppose makes sense. Not many people would want to remember something so morbid. A unique thing about this movie is how it keeps switching between color and black and white, which I rarely see for full length movies. Joe's flashbacks and dreams are in color, and when he talks to Jesus, the color is more vibrant, probably deliberately. For the depressing hospital scenes, it's in black and white, because it's the absence of happiness and color. In addition to all of its disturbing imagery, I think one of the most disturbing things about this movie is that you don't ever see Joe's face. They show it in his flashbacks, but for the hospital scenes, he is always covered in bandages. You can't even see his limb stumps because he's covered in a sheet. The filmmakers understood that showing you what he looks like now would ruin the tension, so they leave your imagination to think of something terrifying. To summarize, Johnny Got His Gun is a truly tragic and depressing movie that will definitely be hard for most people to watch, but it perfectly demonstrates the utter absurdity of war and the costs of winning one.
Review of Johnny Got His Gun
