I saw a preview screening (and Q&A with Alex Garland) of WARFARE last night and have been mulling over it in my thoughts for a little while now. I don’t really quite know what to make of it. It’s a weirdly reductive piece of filmmaking that removes almost every aspect or trope of “cinema” in the name of adherence to reality. Or at least, the remembered reality of the people who experienced the event portrayed. Alex Garland met Ray Mendoza while he was making CIVIL WAR. Ray was brought onboard by his stunt coordinator, to help shape the climatic battle scenes of that movie with a more accurate portrayal of the real military at work. Building off the back of the friendship they forged, WARFARE is clearly very much a collaborative project and feels far less Alex Garland-y than any of his previous movies. You can see his hand in certain shots and scenes, but it does feel more like he’s supplying the technical resources (and filmmaking experience) here to help Ray tell his story.
Some people didn’t like CIVIL WAR, because it didn’t overtly politicise the nature of the conflict and didn’t really pick sides. WARFARE is based on real events and real people, but again it doesn’t really politicise them, and it’s told in what could be described as a matter-of-fact and impersonal way. You’re watching these soldiers acting professionally, doing their job. And this job isn’t glamorous or exciting. It’s tedious and slow. That is – until the shit hits the fan and then it’s utterly terrifying. There’s a certain satisfaction watching the mechanical and well-practiced motions and routines they go through in the face of an escalating and very dire situation. I guess you could describe it as “competence porn” – the satisfying nature of seeing people acting rationally and with skill to overcome adversity. That certainly doesn’t mean that they always succeed though – and the film does not shy away from the gruesome consequences when things go wrong. Battlefield injuries are shown in excruciatingly realistic detail. You feel the pain they’re going through. The dirt and violence of armed conflict.
The sound design is absolutely phenomenal. I saw it in a cinema with Dolby Atmos sound – and the field of sound is overwhelming. You feel like you’re immersed in total chaos. It’s unsettling and disturbing. But the sound maps out the landscape too – you always get a sense of place, even when the literal fog of war descends over the combat zone and everything becomes a hellish murk.
So did I like it? Yes. But.
It’s a strange film as I said at the start. It almost doesn’t feel like a “film” – more like a forensic reconstruction of a real life event, told dryly and without any perceived unnecessary flourish. If you want to get the feel of what it’s like to be in the military and experience combat, then this is almost certainly the most accurate depiction of it ever. It makes BLACK HAWK DOWN look like The A-Team. But does that make it compelling cinema? I mean, maybe. It’s 93 minutes of extremely tense and traumatising horror – and horror in the real sense of the word. I’m glad I saw it – and especially glad I saw it on a big screen with amazing sound. But I don’t know if I’ll ever want to watch it again. It’s like watching one of those “how is it made” videos on youtube, showing the giant factories where they make frozen lasagne or something. There’s a kind of fascination to seeing how the process works – and how the end product is made. But once you do, you might not feel compelled to see more of it. Reality can get dull. And I don’t think it’s crazy to want to watch movies or shows about characters you can more easily relate to, with relatable problems.
The Q&A afterwards with Alex Garland elevated the experience for me though. He’s an incredibly articulate and thoughtful man. And hearing him describe his own process and the thinking he had while making this helped me appreciate it more. He’s clearly trying hard to strike a tone of objective neutrality in his filmmaking. And for this one, he slavishly tried to tie everything to unvarnished reality as much as he could. But was that a good idea for a movie? Maybe. Maybe not. I mean, there’s not really any conventional structure to this film. There’s no 3-act structure here really. Not much in the way of character arcs or personal development. It’s just a thing that happened. I’m not going to say if that’s good or bad, it’s maybe less a “movie” and more an “experience”. I do know that I probably won’t be rushing to watch it again any time soon. But dammit – I APPRECIATED it!
