One Rule

I have one rule for the movies I watch-- ONE FUCKING RULE-- and that is that no children shall die in the movie. I realize that it's part of reality, but I don't need to watch that as a form of entertainment, you know? Lately, I haven't been having much luck with this rule. It's almost as though Netflix has some sort of "dying children" flag on my account, and uses this to make recommendations.

I just finished watching a movie called Turtles Can Fly, [MOVIE SPOILER BELOW, DO NOT READ IF YOU PLAN TO SEE THIS] which was a really excellent film, in it's own right, except that it started out with a scene involving a young girl (13ish) jumping off a cliff. Don't worry though, it takes a real downturn from there. She jumped off, see, because she couldn't stand living any longer as a Kurdish refugee in Iraq, especially not while taking care of her blind, 2 year old son who is the product of her being raped by Iraqi soldiers. Wait, it gets so much worse. Her (slightly older) brother tried to help her, but he couldn't, on account of his arms having been cut off. Don't worry about who's going to care for the baby now, she drowned him in a lake before she jumped.

Then there's the other children of the village/refugee camp. What they do for a living, is they clear the adult farmer's fields of landmines, disarm them, and sell them at the weapon's market in town. Naturally, many of them were limbless too.
[END SPOILER]

The preview had made this out to be a movie about triumph of the human spirit in the face of adversity, and I suppose it is, in it's own way. I almost turned it off at the beginning, but I didn't and I guess I'm glad I watched it. Some movies are violent for violence sake. Some try to make a larger point, but fail. This movie was very honest. It was not an anti-war movie. The film, in fact, expressed no view of the war, though the Kurdish refugees looked forward to the upcoming American invasion with mixed fear and hope. It was filmed on location, where children really do clear landmines, and life really is that hard. The limbless children were, near as I could tell, really deformed, and not CGI's (it's not that kind of movie). It's well acted and it's beautifully filmed. I would see it, but don't expect to feel good about it.