On Warfare

When I watched Civil War last year, I found myself wondering what a war movie by Alex Garland would be like. The tension he gave to the combat sequences in Civil War bordered on harrowing, mirroring the intensity of, say, Full Metal Jacket or The Hurt Locker. Nestled in there was a deeply cynical opinion of war itself, echoing what Tolkien described as “the utter stupid waste of war.” There was little glory in the violence. So when it turned out that Garland was making an actual war movie, I knew I had to go see Warfare.

And Warfare does deliver. Limited to a single squad in a single battle, there’s precious little editorializing to the battle. There’s no grand mission, there’s no updates, no debriefing – there’s no clear reason as to why these Americans are here. Instead, they’re stuck in a house they took over, waiting for evacuation — and suddenly the war movie is a horror movie. Blood covers the floor, distant gunfire the herald of impending doom, a man screaming in pain. War is hell.

That lack of editorializing does perhaps lend itself to different readings. Is the fact that the soldiers make it through their ordeal even without a greater mission not indicative of their heroism? Isn’t survival a victory? I’d argue that Warfare drops hints at to the contrary. None of the soldiers have a great moment of badassary (let alone heroism) — in fact the one guy that tries to act like an action hero is written off as a jackass by the others. The movie remembers that the Americans are invaders in this Iraqi neighborhood who don’t belong there. And, of course, there is no point to all this.

There’s a quote, attributed to François Truffaut that “there is no such thing as an anti-war film,” that no matter how badly someone might try and communicate how awful war is, there will be those who see the work as glorifying it. Warfare perhaps skirts the adage by not necessarily trying to be an anti-war film in as much as making a fictional observational documentary about a battle as remembered by those who were there, unflinching in its brutality. What you make of the depicted battle is up to you.

Tellingly, there is a group of people who didn’t share their stories for the movie’s story: the family whose home is taken over by the American soldiers. There’s little question as to what they would make of the battle.