How to evaluate the movie "Unbreakable"

Indestructible: A World War II story about survival, struggle and redemption

The protagonist is Louis Zamperini, who is now 92 years old and an Italian immigrant from California, USA. The first generation descendant, a little boy who was once full of energy and useless, an athlete who participated in the 5000-meter race of the 1939 Berlin Olympics and won 8th place and shook hands with Hitler.

A life that should have been peaceful or glorious joined the U.S. Air Force under the call of war.

From December 7, 1941 to September 2, 1945, during World War II, the U.S. military and its allied forces fought a large-scale military war with the Japanese army in the Asia-Pacific theater, that is, The famous Pacific War. As the main battlefield of World War II, this was a major collision between the two warring parties in the world's vastest sea area. The Pacific War was preceded by Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and ended with Japan's surrender. There were as many as 37 countries participating in the war, involving more than 1.5 billion people. The warring parties mobilized more than 60 million troops and lasted three years and several months. Casualties and losses are difficult to estimate.

Flying a B-24 fighter jet in the Coral Sea and on Midway Island in a dive battle with a Japanese Zero fighter jet, Louis (Louis Zamperini) grew into an outstanding air force soldier. However, a strange fate did not allow him to continue flying on the battlefield, but instead threw him into another plane crash during a search and rescue mission.

The three members climbed onto the life raft from the oily sea with scars, followed by groups of sharks, tortured by thirst and hunger in the scorching sun, and in the repeated tug of hope and despair, It stayed afloat at sea for 47 days!

He, Phil, and Mike were floating on a life raft at sea. On a raft with almost no life-saving equipment, they were in despair almost every moment, and their bodies were constantly in despair. They were constantly suffering from no food, no water, exposure to the sun or heavy rain, and they never knew when they would be saved mentally. In this case, Louis and Phil's optimism saved them. Although they faced the most difficult situation, they were always thinking about their life after being rescued. They never despaired, but faced all the suffering head-on. Louis (Louis Zamperini) and his comrades used wisdom, persistence and faith to face death approaching again and again. A heart-pounding plot is that in the vast sea life, the three people formed a routine, which is to listen to Louis describe in detail every night what kind of ingredients his mother used in the kitchen and how to cook steaming food. It is with the support of this "fantasy delicacy" that several men insist on eating raw seabirds, fish, meat, hair, and drinking blood.

In contrast, another comrade Mike is different from them. The book writes: "Despite facing the same predicament, the three of them had different attitudes that determined their different destinies. Louis and Phil replaced fear with hope and persevered in trying to survive, and each victory increased their Physical and psychological strength. Mike's withdrawal seemed to overwhelm him, and the less he wanted to engage in it, the weaker his will became. As a result, although he was minimally active, as time went on, On the contrary, his physical strength weakened the fastest. Whether it was Louis and Phil's optimism or Mike's failure, it was actually a process of self-realization."

The original work reads: "Louis. (Louis Zamperini) I woke up from my dream in the morning and found that the world was strangely quiet. The sea was so calm that it seemed like a piece of land that humans could walk on. There was no wind. The life raft, the sea and the world seemed to be frozen in the painting. When the fish jumped out of the sea in the distance, they could clearly hear the splashing sound of the sea water. The hunger, thirst and fear of death seemed to evaporate from their bodies at that moment. There is only joy, gratitude and peace..."

War is cruel and merciless. As an ordinary soldier, Louis (Louis Zamperini) and others have to face being attacked, destroyed, plane crashes, Various death threats such as desperate drifting after the crash can lead to loss of life at any time. For the crash crew, among all these terrible misfortunes, the last thing they want to happen is to be captured by the Japanese army, because the Japanese army is in Nanjing The atrocities of the US military shocked the whole world, and the experiences of prisoners of war by the US military on the Pacific battlefield also reached their ears. Therefore, in their view, being captured was like going to the bottom of hell. A B-24 was seriously damaged over the Japanese army, and all crew members Only one of them chose to parachute, while the others shuddered at the fate of being captured and preferred to crash the plane and die. Unfortunately, Zamperini was about to face such hell.

The very lengthy part that follows is the dark and twisted prison life experienced as a POW (Prisoner of War) after being captured by the Japanese army. During this period, he was imprisoned in four Japanese prisoner-of-war camps, and was beaten and abused by the Japanese who war-distorted human nature. I survived more than 700 days and nights of physical and mental torture. The protagonist's experience is a bit like Bush Sr. He was shot down by a Japanese military plane during the Pacific War and was rescued. However, he was not as lucky as Bush Sr. He did not become a war hero but became a prisoner of war. However, he experienced life experiences that ordinary people cannot experience.

The "Geneva Convention" has relevant provisions for prisoners of war, but the Japanese army, which is known for its brutality, has not implemented it. In their view, the captured prisoners of war are completely slaves. The Japanese government signed a contract with a private company to These people were sent to factories, coal mines and docks to perform unpaid labor. There, prisoners of war were forced to engage in very difficult military production or material transportation work, and there were always people wielding batons. They also became a tool for some perverted Japanese soldiers to vent their anger. Thousands of prisoners of war died doing this work and were tortured before their death. Zamperini was in the Omori prisoner of war camp, which was also a famous slave labor camp. He had to face hard labor, disease, hunger and perverted Japanese military abuse. However, he persisted, missing his family and yearning for life. He did not give up, survived the extremely difficult environment, and even though his spirit was extremely damaged, he used his indestructible will to adjust, live a relatively normal life, and be able to speak rationally about his experiences, and Accusing war and calling for peace.

In particular, one of the wardens named Bird became Louis' nightmare in his later nightmares. In the end, Bird, as a World War II war criminal, evaded police tracking and remained anonymous for decades. His story is also a highlight in the book. It was not until his later years that Bird decided to reveal his identity and apologize to the prisoners of war during World War II. By this time, Louis was already a devout Christian, and he had already melted his hatred for Bird into sympathy and forgiveness in his heart.

After being rescued at the end of World War II, the returned Jedi warrior Louis Zamperini was deeply entangled in the shadow of the war. The war has passed, but the hatred cannot be overcome; his life has gotten better, but his spirit has not improved. His life was almost destroyed by resentment, but he has spent more than 1,800 days on the road to redemption with his indestructible will. He finally got over the damage caused by the war and became a happy and long-lived old man. The legendary life of this 94-year-old man demonstrates the value of perseverance in the face of unpredictable fate and his bloody and tearful indictment of the cruel war.

After Louis was finally rescued, someone asked him how he survived. His answer was: If I knew I would suffer so much, I would kill myself.

This is a truth. What can support a person to keep going is the desire that "tomorrow will be better." If you "know" or think that tomorrow will be worse, then many people may choose to commit suicide. For Louis, he did not need to commit suicide when he was at sea, because for him at that time, "death was the least urgent thing" and he faced the threat of death at any time. But in the Japanese prisoner-of-war camp, this was not the case. Louis suffered severe beatings every day, his body and mind were all severely tested, and he would never see the light of day again. If he didn't die while floating on the sea, he would definitely reach shore one day. However, in the Japanese prisoner-of-war camp, the only thing he could hope for was victory. However, if he won, they would probably be massacred by the Japanese army. Louis was beaten day after day, and for him, surviving until tomorrow meant one more day of beatings, and surviving until next week meant seven more days of beatings.

So it really takes courage to live.

Because of my love for "Unbreakable", I began to look for other books written by the original author Laura Hillenbrand. Only then did I realize that such a good writer had only written two books - "The Age of Era" and "Unbreakable".

Her personal story is probably no less exciting than the images she writes. She has suffered from a disease called "Chronic fatigue syndrome" since she was 19 years old. Much of the time she was too weak to leave the house, and even more of the time she couldn't even leave her room.

To write Unbroken, she conducted 75 interviews with Louis Zamperini, and from what I read, these interviews were all conducted over the phone. Louis Zamperini himself wondered why the author didn't come to talk to him. Later he realized that the author was too weak to leave home. Her husband started dating her 6 months before her onset of illness. Her husband did not leave her for many years after her illness, but they did not marry (they did not marry until 2008, 22 years after Laura became ill). Because, even he himself didn’t know whether he didn’t leave Laura because he loved her or because of moral needs.

He is embarrassed, he is tired, he is physically and mentally exhausted. Later, "The Age of Era" became a hit, and Laura finally started to become rich.

Her husband, who was still her boyfriend at the time, finally decided to confess his true feelings to her, because he reassured himself: Laura is rich now, and if I leave her now, I won't Scorned as the worst bastard in the world. Of course, what happened was that after confessing, he realized he couldn't live without her.

Laura sat down during their 2008 wedding. Laura chose the cake herself, but Laura didn’t know the taste of the cake, because by the time the cake was served, she was too tired to eat it.

Any person, even a very inconspicuous person, his life will be a great book.