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Watching Bridge at Remagen and a bunch of other war movies this summer. feels like every film or novel that doesn’t follow the Hero’s Journey has effectively earned a bonus 1.5 stars.
Specialness’s is fentanyl in disguised mythic beats—chosen one, mentor, ordeal, return—that when I now encounter stories that meander, dwell in ambiguity, or deny catharsis, they often feel more real, or at least refreshingly alien.
Bridge at Remagen, was probably as a 3-star WWII procedural when it came out—solid, topical, but unremarkable. Yet now, it reads like a lean, unsentimental relic from a different cultural logic. Its refusal to mythologize gives it weight. It hasn’t changed—but we have. And that might be worth 1.5 stars right there; radically honest, refreshingly unmanipulative, and intellectually stimulating precisely because it refuses the easy high of the mythic template. That refusal is narrative sobriety in an age of mythic opioids. 0 reply
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