Warfare

How do you review a dramatic re-enactment?

Accuracy isn't an option, as the story being told is based on co-director Ray Mendoza's experience as a Navy SEAL during the Iraq War. I've no reason to doubt his recollection, but I can't comment on how well it was captured. Which is what he and co-director Alex Garland want us thinking about: both the opening intertitle and the movie's tagline reference memory and how foundational it is to this reconstruction. Although I'm not sure to what ends. The events seem grounded (albeit incredibly intense), so it's unlikely to be referring to thee veracity of the situation. If you equate instinct forged through training as a form of memory, then it's crucial to the troops' ability to keep it together as well as they do once things go south. The memory of the event lives on: an epilogue shows the real survivors arrive on set to help construct the story. And presumably, it persists through their lasting trauma, as even before the assault is over, a few of them are very visibly rattled.

As a war film, we must assess it through the lens of the famous Francois Truffaut quote: "Every film about war ends up being pro-war". I'm less absolutist about it, but I basically agree: attempting to show the horrors of war almost always ends up glorifying it or the people involved or justifying the cause or something, if only for a single scene. Warfare is trying very hard to valorize the troops while saying nothing about the broader war. We know nothing about the Marine Corps mission which they're in place to support. We hear no discussion of the broader context, nor of the enemy combatants. We spend basically the whole story locked in a house with the soldiers, the only outside contact the occasional radio crackle as they communicate with nearby teams and request CASEVAC. As far as the movie is concerned, the rest of the war and its political context do not exist, despite the audience's awareness that of course it does.

But there are a few cracks in the presentation of an this military operation as "apolitical".

The whole first half of the movie is a slow build of tension as the soldiers monitor the outside activity, watching for a gathering which could signal an imminent attack. During that time, everyone is portrayed as calm, cool, and collected. They tell jokes. They rib each other. They mechanically perform their roles. There's some anxiety, especially as the attack looks more and more certain. But their confidence and poise is admirable. Even once the assault comes, there's a fairly brief period of chaos (which feels like an eternity), after which they regroup and start doing the best they can. The tidy and well-regimented order is disrupted, and they can't act as effectively or efficiently, but their training holds. They're all impacted, but maintain their cool far better than the average person would. By portraying these men in such a strongly positive light, it's undeniably pro-military.

But Mendoza and Garland do not sugarcoat the cost of war. They refuse to look away from the violence, showing you the full extent of the injuries they sustained. Their screams never stop, just occasionally quiet down. Maybe more poignantly, if less forefronted, is the civilian family whose life is torn asunder. I mentioned the Americans are in camped out in a house: that wasn't a turn of phrase. The first thing we see is an operation under the cover of night in which this team sneaks into the house and move both families into a single room, all the while holding them at gunpoint and shouting. They will stay in this one room throughout the horrors of the next hour or so, occasionally the subject of further threats. While nothing untoward happens to them, they weren't exactly given a choice of whether to house foreign troops. They didn't consent to having their home ruined by bullets and explosives. When it's all over, the combatants will move on (be it on foot or in body bags), but they'll be left behind to pick up the pieces.

The film is undeniably effective. The sense of helplessness despite knowing what's coming is tremendously uncomfortable, especially since all we know is what the team knows. As they hang out at the house passing the time, we feel the tension slowly ratcheting up. Until a sudden incursion knocks over the first domino, foretelling the broader assault which will define the back half of the story. It's the varied reactions after things go to hell which really drive everything home. They are not the mindless automatons they first presented as. In the face of terror and violence and pain, they're dazed and screaming and confused and just want to get the hell out of there. Yes, as mentioned, their training takes over enough to keep them going. But it's notable that Ray (D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai) keeps zoning out, struggling to stay present, so much so that he eventually hands off communication duties. It's notable that Sam's (Joseph Quinn) distress is written all over his face, even as he tries to continue giving orders. And it's notable how my audience drew a sharp breath every time anyone stepped in front of a window or door.

The film's use of sound plays a huge role in that. After a short scene of the troops psyching themselves up pre-operation by watching the video for "Call Me" by Eric Prydz, there's no music until the end credits, highlighting the role of the sound department. After impressing everyone (except the Academy) with the sound effects in Civil War, Garland does it again here. The way sound is used to tell the story adds such a rich texture, from the radio crackles to whispered commands to the distant shouts to the various cracks of gunshots. Most upsetting is its warping at a key moment around the midpoint, where it heightens the confusion and puts us directly into the headspace of one of the soldiers, in a scene which lasts for a few eternal minutes.

I cannot answer the question "Is Warfare a good film?". The concept of what it means for a movie to be "good" is just too limiting for a work that lies so far outside what we normally consider. It's not interested in narrative, it's interested in saying "This happened". It's not interested in commenting on big ideas, it wants you to know what the world looks like below the realm of ideas. It's less interested in the technical elements (impressive though they are), and more in their cumulative effect on the viewer. As such, normal criteria feels inadequate, even inappropriate. The movie makes the case that as long as they're not getting in the way, they're good enough. Its sole desire seems to be showing you a slice of reality, informing you that this is what modern warfare looks like, and asking how that makes you feel.

For me, the answer to that question is fairly straightforward: horrified.