Crazy
Crazy
| 02 December 1999 (USA)
Crazy Trailers

The haunting experiences of Dutch U.N. peacekeepers are woven together by the powerful influence music has had on their endurance, survival, and memories of war. This documentary is filled with close-up interviews, scrapbook photographs, video clips, news footage, letters read aloud, and other recollections, as different generations of Dutch peacekeeping soldiers recount the trauma of bloodshed from Korea to more recent events in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. Their trusting, and often disturbing, personal revelations resound most poignantly when they talk about the single pieces of music that each found powerful enough to keep insanity at bay.

Reviews
boxhopper999

Deeply moving account of dutch war veterans from recent conflicts (the Congo, Bosnia/Herzogovina etc.) who are struggling to come to terms with their post-war lives. The crutch many of them use is music, specifically a single song, which either kept them going while they were on active duty or is a rooting experience for them as they recall the horrors of their war experiences. One well-groomed officer of a UN unit composed of Dutch enlisted men, looks at first glance to be a well-balanced listener of say, classical music, although he uses Seal's song "Crazy" to recall how he had to stand by with his unarmed unit in former Yugoslavia as paramilitaries machine-gunned the inhabitants of a village in an adjacent building; another, a private, recalls driving his lorry through a sniper-infested route, as his song (can't remember it now) blared into his eardrums giving him the courage to keep going. Very unobtrusive directing by dutch master Honigmann and the recollections -- often tearful, as she keeps the camera on the veterans while the music plays -- are as powerful and damning an anti-war indictment as you're likely to see.

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