Warfare

by Philip Price

Photo: A24

Directors: Alex Garland & Ray Mendoza 
Starring: D'Pharoah Woon-A-Tai, Will Poulter & Cosmo Jarvis 
Rated: R (intense war violence & bloody/grisly images & language)
Runtime: 1 hour & 35 minutes

 
Making a war film inherently means you're making an anti-war film even if that intention was never part of the process. No matter your political persuasion, the reasons for the conflict, or even the dopamine hit certain types of personalities receive from being amidst such situations, one would hope we could agree that the waste of life given in exchange for such rationale is not only unfortunate, but unnecessary. By default, most war films are labeled as propaganda - using seductions of the cinematic language to portray the horrors of combat in an idealized and/or unrealistic fashion - yet writer/director Alex Garland in collaboration with Navy vet Ray Mendoza seek to strip the genre of all such seductions to make audiences both more aware of such stories while also conducting something of an experiment to gauge what conclusions are drawn and what the perceived central idea becomes when taking a more forensic approach to these events as opposed to a more fabricated one. 
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Interestingly, the film informs the audience of said experiment up front, stating that the film is based on the memory of the people who lived it. Though Mendoza serves as co-director as well as receiving a screenwriting credit and is portrayed in the film by D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, “Warfare” is an ensemble piece that is essentially a re-enactment of an encounter this platoon experienced during the Iraq War in the wake of the Battle of Ramadi. The film gives no more context than this, allowing viewers to take whatever they glean from it. While the film very clearly seeks to honor and respect what these men do when risking their lives to execute the whims of their superiors and their superiors’ superiors, in terms of being an exercise in the “less is more” school of filmmaking and crafting what is ultimately a collage of memory pieces it is a fascinating experiment as it is inherently understood that even the most vivid of memories are subjective, that there can be no absolutes in the chaos of such confrontations, and further – that everything that has happened to these individuals since these events has informed their recollections of these moments.

What is “Warfare” then if not the indisputable truth it so desperately seeks to be? The ambition is admirable, but whereas the debate over whether Garland and Mendoza accomplished their vision could go on forever, the fact of the matter is they have still made a tightly constructed, viscerally disorienting experience that ironically doesn’t make you think as much as it makes you feel. Despite the seeming question Garland has hung over the film regarding how much substance he can conjure while enlisting as few tricks as possible, it is the appropriation of the feeling of what it was like to be in these situations with these guys at this moment in time that the film elicits most effectively. This is thanks in large part to the incredible sound design (I jumped twice) as well as to the precision of the performances. 
 
In what might either be a highly calculated move by casting director Kharmel Cochrane or is otherwise pure kismet, “Warfare” features a who’s who of upcoming male talent where each seem to be on the cusp of either breaking through, cementing themselves or amending the direction of their budding career with this opportunity. Will Poulter, Joseph Quinn, Charles Melton, Michael Gandolfini and Noah Centineo all appear and are each recognizable – Poulter, Quinn, and maybe most notably Melton get a fair amount of scenery to chew among dialogue that is mostly technical in nature whereas standouts like Cosmo Jarvis in the Elliot role and Kit Connor as the rookie of the squad are each able to bring the viewer into their interior dialogue through facial ticks and things like their posture as such aforementioned cinematic seductions that might typically help to bolster or better communicate what is going on internally (like a musical score) are nowhere in sight. It should also be noted Taylor John Smith has a striking screen presence and despite mostly existing on the fringes of the action here, would seemingly be destined for lead roles in the future. This is not an acting showcase for any of these participants though but is instead an exercise in commitment to the bit as the narrative moves from one character to another without any regard for traditional archetypes, Centineo serving in such a small role that it wouldn’t be surprising to hear many didn’t realize it was him in the film. 

In many ways, the experimental aspects of Garland and Mendoza’s approach could have been exacerbated further by making the fragmented nature of these memories more apparent in the editing. The lack of a score and of any traditional narrative structure to follow help and maybe it comes down to something as simple as studio notes given how much freedom A24 already afforded the creative team but to push the “no style” style it would seem the disorienting nature of such a firefight might have been even more effective than what the final edit conveys. Of course, this brings about the question of whether or not this approach is in fact a valuable way to communicate this type of story in the first place. As someone shaped by war films such as “Jarhead” and “Black Hawk Down” in addition to real-life events that led to a perspective of having a certain amount of skepticism if not outright distrust in the reasons why America would intervene in foreign situations, this “re-enactment” does little to change that mindset. Having watched “Born on the Fourth of July” for the first time last year, Oliver Stone’s film is largely the antithesis of what Garland specifically seems to be chasing here yet seemingly draws many if not all of the same conclusions. Simply acknowledging these events and the men that served feels like enough of a reason to try and capture this experience as truthfully as possible but there will inevitably be questions drawn from this secondhand experience about what purpose beyond acknowledgement does this serve if not to send a message. Whether to honor or exploit, the fact “Warfare” exists as it does and comes from what are two presumably different viewpoints is a testament to that of the methods under which it was made. What audiences see and hear on screen is as integral to the experience as what they don’t; the gaps in these depictions leaving way for the minutia to form ideas and eventually opinions about what war is and what it represents. Does the film ultimately capture as well as prompt what the filmmakers hoped? We’ll likely never know but that the film is as evocative as it is – in both the combat it depicts and the ideas that it spurns – seems enough for both Garland and Mendoza to be justly satisfied in the intent they were chasing.