EDITOR'S NOTE: The following is the eighth installment of an ongoing series, Diary Of An Aspiring Film Snob, which chronicles one loser's attempt to join the ranks of film snobdom.

If you're going to try to become a film snob - and hence explore the world of film to a greater degree than you might have otherwise - one thing is inevitable.

You're going to have to watch some war films.

Like many, there has always been a place in my heart for a strong war movie. I didn't have to be a film snob to feel the impact of a good war film. No one does. A war film is a visceral experience. If not punctuated with bombs and explosions and rains of gunfire ­ all things even the most cinematically ignorant can understand ­ then they feature moral gut-punches or simple, universal truths about sacrifice, camaraderie and the nature of good and evil. Broad strokes painted in black and white. Terms simple to grasp and simple to understand.

Yet like so much in the world, things aren't actually that simple. An example: I knew when seeing Platoon at far too young an age that the film was disturbing and unsettling, but I didn't know why. Sure, watching children be murdered on screen should shake you up; it should be disturbing; that I understood; but it can just as easily be transparently manipulative, shallow and easily noticed exploitation. Yet not here. My knowledge of cinematic language was too undeveloped to understand why Oliver Stone was so effective in punching me in the gut. (And maybe it still is.) Why did Platoon succeed where others failed? I did not know.

War films utilize the language of cinema, yet in some ways they are also a breed apart. To convey scope, to convey a sense of place and scale, to convey the necessary urgency of violence, these are things not often confronted in films outside the genre. I was always able to enjoy (and maybe more importantly, be affected by) a good war film on a visceral level, but that's the easy part for a director. What about pushing all the right intellectual buttons? What about challenging your expectations of what the so-called "glory" of war is? And what about doing so without relying on cardboard cutouts of stereotypes? The truth is, had you shown me Saving Private Ryan 15, 20 years ago, I probably would have hailed it as the greatest war film ever made. It was a kinetic experience built on perfectly executed technique. Stephen Spielberg is as adept at audience manipulation as any director has ever been. He knew what buttons to push.

But you didn't get me, Stephen. Oh no. I was on to you, buddy, because when Saving Private Ryan came out, I was learning. I was ready. I saw your tricks. I saw you assemble a cookie-cutter squad, and I saw you toy with my emotions, and I saw your melodramatic shortcuts and transparent cinematic tricks. Damnit, I knew what you were doing.

So why does it still break me up every time I see that young man bleeding in front of the just-smashed German machine gun outpost, calling for his mother, blood flowing from his wounds, wounds that cannot be healed, a red tide that washes in, in, in, but never out?

I guess he got me after all.

Sometimes we don't know as much as we think. As recognizable as some of Spielberg's manipulation can be, as much as we know what he's trying to do to us, we let some of our strings be pulled anyway.

I have learned some things about war movies in my quest to become a film snob, however. I learned that a war film does not have to be about soldiers fighting other soldiers. They aren't always about combat. Combat and violence may be the obvious (and arguably most easy) part of using war as a stepping stone to great film, but just as often war can simply serve as a thematic starting point from which to tell all manner of stories. Some of the greatest films of all time use the larger backdrop of war as a vital element to push events forward, yet without requiring a soldier's eye view. Classic films like Gone With The Wind and Casablanca are, to some extent, films that deal with how war has impacted the lives of their characters. They're not war films per se, yet war's impact is a key element in their respective plots. Legendary director David Lean used war as a backdrop in classic epics like Doctor Zhivago and Lawrence Of Arabia, the former featuring war as but one element in its grand vistas, the latter ultimately a four-hour biopic despite some grand action. These are another breed of war film, cinema I don't think I would have been capable of appreciating in the context of "war films" prior to my ongoing quest to understand film in a way I never had before.

Not that I can claim some deep understanding even now. The thing is, war isn't black and white. It's not simple. And so those films that best capture the fragmented aspects of war are often far from simple and far from black and white. The truth is, realizing why a director might use soft focus or how the editing impacts a scene often doesn't do one a damn bit of good in figuring out what makes the most powerful war films as emotionally affecting as they can be.

Because when you're dealing with something as emotionally and morally complex as war, you're entering a whole new world that reaches far beyond the tricks of the movie trade.

This whole "aspiring to be a film snob" thing. Sheesh. Had I known it would have taken thought beyond simply sitting back and watching a movie, maybe I would have abandoned the whole idea as something better left to pretentious, empty people looking to have something to be snobby about at Starbucks.

But no, that's not what I would have done. This quest, started far too late in my life, has been nothing but rewarding. Challenging. Forcing me to view things from angles I never had before and prompting me to take in experiences I would not have previously considered. And that, dear readers, is the great joy of trying to immerse yourself in a world you had only ever experienced in the most shallow of ways.

I still don't understand war, though.

Watch for future installments of Diary Of An Aspiring Film Snob.