Film documentary review

Film Documentary Review: Nix on Behind Forgotten Eyes (2006)

The reviewer Nix chose to review the film Behind Forgotten Eyes (2006). The film is a documentary that addresses the comfort women, which was the term used to describe the Korean women who were forced to act as prostitutes for Japanese soldiers during World War II. The reviewer obviously had some knowledge of the history of comfort women, and used his historical knowledge as a basis for judging the film. However, he did not seem to strictly evaluate the film's historical accuracy. Whether this was because he found the film to be historically accurate or whether he was simply impressed with the emotional impact of the film is something that was not made clear in the documentary.

In fact, the reviewer took a very emotional and empathetic approach to the film review. He was clearly impressed by the story that the documentary told, and asked others to question whether they would be able to find the same strength or resiliency as the women portrayed in the film if they ever faced the same type of circumstances. In fact, while the reviewer found that the film portrayed a cruelty one would have hoped was extinguished by the 20th century, he compared what happened to the comfort women to other widely known atrocities, such as the Massacre of Nanking, the concentration camps, and Pol Pot's killing fields. The reviewer made it clear that he agreed with the documentary's director's interpretation of the comfort women's ordeal that these women were forced into sexual slavery and that they did not willingly act as prostitutes.

Because the reviewer felt that the film was separated into three acts, he addressed each part of the documentary separately. The first part of the documentary focuses on comfort women and the soldiers who utilized them giving their personal accounts of the comfort women experience. The reviewer was obviously sympathetic to the plight of the comfort women, casting them as victims and the soldiers as victimizers, which is how almost all historians view the scenario. In fact, the reviewer seemed to make it clear that this film would provide insight even for people well-familiar with the comfort women story. Three survivors talk about what they endured as comfort women, and how that has continued to impact them and their lives, to this day. The reviewer describes the women using graphic detail, which is an interesting and anomalous phrase. After all, would not one expect to find descriptions of rape to be graphic and disturbing? However, the euphemistic phrasing that is employed to justify human rights violations like this one, such as calling the women "comfort women" rather than "sex slaves" softens the impact of what has been done, even years after the fact. Therefore, while it is clear that the reviewer has previously studied these events, it is equally clear that the reviewer did not ever really consider the impact that being forced into prostitution for an enemy army would have on a person.