The movie "War", As is co-directed by Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza, it is one of the most direct visceral military films ever made. The directors' camera hangs, as a fascinated extraterrestrial, to minor details, bothering them how to record biological notes. Viewers can virtually feel the textures of the soldiers' guns, the weight of their huge uniforms and the temperature of the premises in which they are. When the IEDs start exploding, the audio begins to fade in and out, the film's mikers seem to exist in the ears of any soldier we see at that moment. There is a lot of screaming and bleeding and panic.

Ad

"War" took place in Iraq in 2006, in detail of a very specific battle during the wide and chaotic war of George Bush on terror. Garland and Mendoza built their film completely from the memories of the soldiers involved and built the sets of a film -based film made in the heat of the fighting. Indeed, Mendoza was one of those soldiers, serving as a communicator. (Actor D'Faraoh Wun-a-Tai plays Mendoza in the film.) The cameras remain with US troops all over the film, either standing next to them or looking at their perspective through spy cameras, allowing the audience to see where they are on the battlefield. "War" has the most amazing sense of spatial continuity of any film.

Ad

Frustrating, "warfare" also seems to have no point of view. It is not about what the function of this battle is or what is it if its leadership wins or losses. There are no discussions about Bush, the meaning or nonsense of the whole war or how Americans feel about Iraq or Iraqis. The soldiers themselves are not portrayed as heroes or villains, but as ordinary stiffs who sometimes do brave things and sometimes do horrible things. This is not an anti -war film like "All Silent on the Western Front" or a work of Ingoism as a "act of courage". It's neutral.

Everyone with any political view will come out of "warfare" and shocked and shocked, if it is strangely disappointed. There seems to be no feelings about the war in Iraq or the role of the United States in it. The film opens with a group of soldiers watching a sexy, soft-core training video, ridiculing and ridiculing the buttocks, perhaps implied that their aggressive heterosexuality can be linked to their role as "male" freedom fighters. However, those pictures and ideas stop after the battle begins. The film does not include additional symbols or discussions of sexuality or masculinity.

Ad

There is a scene on the stage through "warfare" when a seriously injured man struggles with pain, at that moment another soldier enters his stronghold and starts barking epithets for hardness. He approaches the injured man and says things like "You got this! You're tough!" That man is largely ignored, though, because all the other soldiers (Will Pulter, Cosmo Ararvis and Charles Melton among them are more concerned about their evacuation because they are under heavy fire.

As this is the case, this was the point. Speaking in an interview for /filmGarland and Mendoza have confirmed that "warfare" is intended to be intimate to the extent that it will lose its thesis. Garland referred to the cinema as a wide church, stating:

Ad

"Within that wide church, you could have a fight film that is trying to be as honest and faithful as possible. And I would have to say that honesty must include some kind of neutrality in the presentation of facts."

Garland withdrew from its own film, more or less saying that interpretation is the work of critics and viewers.

Garland added that when it comes to war, the reconnaissance itself is enough in some cases. Other directors, he noticed, are okay to have a thesis when it comes to war, but he didn't want one. He continued:

"This is just the space we choose to occupy with this film.

Ad

Of course, by making the film be current for us, Garland seems to be diminishing from any moral responsibility. He is the one who makes a fight film and chose this story to tell it. To say the story is just a mirror suggests that he has no feelings for Iraq, American soldiers or war at all. And it is a frustrating point of view to influence.

Garland did something similar to His film in 2024 "Civil War", A dystopian film about Trump's era. The film takes place in the near future when the United States was thrown into a self -destructive, good, civil war. However, the reason for the war and the ideologies of the fighting on the parties are never clear. Why did the United States launch a second civil war? There is no explanation. Garland takes a neutral attitude, just explaining that war, whatever the reason, shoots you. It is a good thesis, of course, but it could be done without using such political full images.

Ad

Garland has no prospects for the years of George W. Bush, it seems. "War" is apolitical. And that, some could say, is a failure.

"War" now plays in cinemas.