How does art reflect life?

The movie 'The Thin Red Line' was , in my opinion similar to what actually happened at the battle of Guadalcanal. The Actors in the movie do an excellent job of displaying emotion, and trying to get the point of what was happening across. This I felt was similar to the way actual soldiers would have acted in the battle.  The movie has a way of making it seem like you were there and it was very strange how bloody the movie was. But then again, what can you really expect from a movie about war?

One thing that was similar between the two movie and actual event was the number of deaths. The battle of Guadalcanal was very bloody, and it cost a lot of lives. seeing as the main character dies, i think its very fitting. Throughout the film , you see a lot of people go down, and honestly i didn't expect them to show how violent things were. started using M3A1 Stuart Light Tanks, and machine guns. they used these to basically annihilate the Japanese. These guns killed a total of 24000 men.
http://www.nationalww2museum.org/see-hear/collections/focus-on/guadalcanal.html
Another similarity was that the Americans had a very cocky attitude about going in and fighting the Japanese. They just act like 'obviously were going to win this because we are better than you, And in real life they were basically like that. They were like 'Oh you think you can bomb us? ha how dare you we are victorious and we have entitlement. The actors did a good job of displaying this , and the actions the Americans took in real life were similar . The American flag being placed in Crescent city was a symbol of what it originally stood for ,pride and independence (which In this case it was taken to far and I feel as if they were acting a bit to cocky)
http://www.nationalww2museum.org/see-hear/collections/focus-on/guadalcanal.html
 The final Similarity is the path of addiction that soldiers took to deal with the pain, stress and other things. In 'The Thin Red Line' there are a few scenes with cigarettes and alcohol. In the actual war itself left many soldiers dealing with loneliness and many had mental illnesses such as depression and later PTSD. In battle soldiers would carry tin cartons of cigarettes, so it protected them from rain and snow, and when people died, they were left behind.
http://www.pacificwrecks.com/people/visitors/flahavin/relics/assortedrelics14.jpg

One way that the movie events differed from the Real life event were that their were way to much land fight scenes. It felt like it was the same thing over and over again. Land forces were  the main focus, and that's not the case, there was a lot of  other things such as air forces and water forces, yes the land forces were stronger and very affective, but Americans still used planes to fight and drop bombs and so did the Japanese.
http://guadalcanal.homestead.com/files/SBD_dive_bomber_1.jpg
Another difference from the movie and the actual battle at Guadalcanal was what happened with the dead bodies when the battle was over. I have read a few times that the book 'The Thin Red Line'  has some parts in it where they describe what other soldiers to the corpses  such as taking things from the bodies, like cigarettes, grenades, bullets, anything that could be sold and used for money, or just used in another round of combat. In the movie, they didn't exactly show them raiding the bodies it was more about the flashbacks the characters were having during the war .
http://www.pacificwrecks.com/people/visitors/flahavin/relics/USgrenade.jpg
The final difference between the movie and the battle is that the rankings of soldiers wasn't clear. Maybe that was just a movie making error, but when they shot the camera close enough to read the badges, you still couldn't read them, and their were so many characters all the names got mismatched. Also sometimes soldiers weren't wearing or using anything that symbolized their rank . In real life you had a position in war, and you could see your badges  and everyone knew who was in what position, and their badges were cherished even after passing , they would be collected and given to families eventually.
http://www.pacificwrecks.com/people/visitors/flahavin/relics/assortedrelic17.jpg

All in all, i think that the movie actually did a pretty good job or representing what happened in the battle, as far as the bloodinesss and all the death and violence. But they did seem to skip over some pretty signifigant war sites such as the battle at Tenaru River. But is it possible to make a movie interesting and not 8 hours long and get every single detail? For a three hour movie, i think they did a good job at representing some parts of the Battle of Guadalcanal.