First, about heroes. Actually, I think that there are too many unnamed heroes in Russia. What I mean is – we are usually ready to be heroes but are really unwilling to make something ordinary in a good way. Plainly, just to do our job. This heroism sprays from each and every crack, like the urine of the drunken man, blinding us, preventing us from living normal and good, untroubled life.
What I think is that Eric may be mistaking heroism and being an outstanding person here, because, unlike heroes, outstanding persons like Gagarin drive the world further and promote the progress. But who developed the rocket, the ship, the armor for this man? They are not heroes. They are not even outstanding. They were just doing their job, and I think that the basis of this world, the future prosperity lie on shoulders of the ordinary people, not those star-like guys, who rise and shine. They were able to stand because they were standing on the shoulders of the others. If they haven’t had them – there would be no heroes.
Ironically, it doesn’t take much to jump in front of the machine gun to cover your friends. It takes much more skills to take a sniper rifle or a grenade in order to eliminate this machine gunner without blindly sacrificing the only gift we have in this world – the sacred life.
Second, about movies. I think that sometimes people try to rewrite history with the books or movies (warned about it in 1984). This, in turn, creates the atmosphere of egocentrism, hate, and haughtiness. Sorry, guys. We are not better or worse than others. We are all the same. Telling otherwise is using the methods which some bad people of the past did. And if the film tells you that someone is superhuman – this teller should also note that it is pure fiction, and no one should take it another way, bbc english.
The most dangerous thing here is history corruption. Lie for patriotism. But there is no such a thing as a proper lie. The lie is lie itself, and it poisonous. We should face the truth, no matter how bitter it is. Otherwise, each generation will make the same mistakes again and again, ruining our lives and the world. We have examples when people understood this like Germans did. Eventually, they found the strength to overcome the guilt and, taking it into an account, change their lives (I’m not talking about the government, it is about general folks). However, please note that even my opinion may be biased because it is based on talks in South Germany.
We should always remember, watching each and every film that plays with the history, that each opinion could be biased. What I am trying to tell is that, no matter how right is a common opinion, it is still NOT THE FACT, and this should be always told in big letters (e.g. on the screen before the movie) in order to put things right.