I wish I could go back. Not 10 seconds, or a minute, ora day, or even a year. I don't want to go back in time to fix some huge mistake I made; I’ve dealt with those already. I want to go back 20, 30, 50, 100, or 1000 years. See the mistakes of others; their successes as well. Experience these people we have only talked about my whole life. People who did such impactful things that we talk about them long after they are dead. Alas, I cannot. But we do have another tool that can recreate such an experience - to a certain extent; movies.

It is crazy to see how the film industry has developed over the past couple of decades. They are constantly coming up with new technology to make movies more entertaining and more realistic. One of my favorite examples of a moment in the past brought to life by the technology of the current film industry is the movie, Hacksaw Ridge. 

It tells the story of Desmond Doss, a young man in the time of WWII, and his struggles with balancing his beliefs of non-violence and the duty he feels to fight for his country. Eventually, he decides to join the army as a medic without a weapon. Therefore, he can save his fellow countrymen from harm without having to fire a bullet. The pinnacle of the movie comes when his platoon gets ordered to take over the heavily defended Japanese strongpoint of Hacksaw Ridge. It was a hard-fought battle and as I sat in the theater, the boom of the speakers from exploding mortars and the sounds of bullets whizzing past my head made me feel as if I was actually there. The best scene, in my opinion, comes near the end of the film. 

Doss’s platoon is ordered to retreat yet Doss decides to stay and rescue as many wounded men as he can. We see him running through the smoke-filled sky, the ground beneath his feet is black and red from the ash and blood. He sprints out into the hellscape before him, finds a wounded soldier, drags him back to the rally point, and then thinks to himself, I gotta get one more, before sprinting back into the smoke. And you get to experience the anticipation with him, the excitement of finding a new soldier, the anxiety of possibly being caught. My heart was pounding at a constant rate of over 100 beats per minute while sitting in a theater watching a movie. And when Desmond finally decides that he has done enough, he is taken off the ridge and a wave of relief crashes over me.

This feeling wasn’t unique to this movie. Other movies such as Selma with the civil rights movement, The Last Samurai where a former union soldier fights in Japan, Operation Finale in which a group of Israeli spies hunts down a nazi officer living in Argentina, and of course, Saving Private Ryan with the outstanding depiction of many of WWII’s famous battles, have helped me experience a significant moment in history without actually being there.

As a history buff, I want nothing more than to travel back in time and experience the past, but until time travel is invented, I suppose movies are the next best thing.