Simon's war

Simon’s War is the story of Simon Weston, a Welsh Guardsman horribly injured in the Falkland’s War. This film follows his fight for recovery and psychological readjustment. Crucial to his progress is the staunch and devoted support of his friends, family, village and, perhaps above all, of his pride in his Welsh identity.The film’s significance for INPUT might lie in the following issues. Indeed, they led to much controversy.1. How should the intrinsic balance of an individual film be reconciled with the public identity of its strand? (The medical content was disproportionate to the personal and emotional flow of the story, some critics argued).2. 2. Is it right to break new ground in specifically revealing so huge a degree of disfigurement? (This film tried to walk the tightrope between tasteless ghoulishness and facile cosmetic storytelling. Some critics argued that to understand the price of war it was not necessary to present Simon’s injuries as intimately as he himself perceived them.)3. Is the overall style of political understatement an appropriate response to the strident jingoism that typified much public reaction to Britain going to War? (It could be argued that the less palatable consequences of war need to be on observed with subtlety and restraint if the story is not to be counter-productive. But Communist critics thought the film pro-war as it did not overtly denounce the whole Falkland episode.)