Alex Garland's Warfare is a brutal anti-war film that was promoted as U.S.-military propaganda

The most interesting aspect of Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza’s Warfare is what remains unsaid. While trailers for the film hint at an eye-rolling work of American propaganda, the advertising campaign is something of a bait and switch. Based on a real incident that unfolded in Iraq in 2006, the film follows in (mostly) real-time, a platoon of Navy SEALs on an ultimately failed mission in so-called enemy territory. After a disorienting prologue featuring Eric Prydz’ proto-pornographic music video “Call On Me,” the film draws us into a mission where one thing after another goes wrong. A devastating and achingly painful assault on the senses, the movie offers little textual context, emphasizing a persistently senseless and cruel military action.

At first glance, Warfare resembles many other Iraq war films. It emphasizes the slow passage of time and the overwhelming boredom of modern combat. Soldiers wait around for things to happen as they terrorize civilians and encroach on the everyday lives of innocent bystanders. From the first moments the American soldiers “occupy” a civilian home, we understand that the film’s sympathies don’t necessarily align with the overarching message of the American mission. The on-the-ground perspective is often interrupted by the perspective of drones, which reduce people to splashes of movement and light, painting a portrait of war that feels alienated and dehumanizing.

The early scenes lay some compelling groundwork for what will later unfold. The American soldiers are often callous, equally obsessed with hierarchies and bawdy humour. Beyond the American rank of command, there’s an inherent disregard and distrust for translators and Iraqi collaborators. We sense almost immediately a lack of transparency and communication failures that will contribute to a total collapse of the mission. As the movie goes on, their Iraqi colleagues are increasingly treated as liabilities and cannon-fodder, disposable body sacks rather than human beings.

Once the shit hits the fan, the movie becomes unrelenting in its violence. Warfare is loud, and for much of the running time, the soundtrack is an overwhelming screech of gunfire and screams. It doesn’t shy away from the violence of war, and bodies are torn apart with graphic detail. Death and injury pile up, and the psychological toll sets in for characters but also the audience. As things go from bad to worse, the soldier’s only hope is another American platoon that arrives to help extradite them from the situation. Rather than offering a glimmer of escape, though, the arrival of new soldiers introduces fresh dynamics of cruelty and carelessness. If it wasn’t so achingly real, it would almost be comical how often this new round of soldiers literally step onto the shredded but (crucially) still-attached limbs of their fellow soldiers.

In a cinematic landscape that often feels overwhelmed by the Cinema of Attractions (a commercialized impulse to flatten and engage the audience at all costs), Warfare uses many of the same techniques endemic to Marvel movies and action films to paint a horrific portrait of war. It’s a movie that challenges the critical idea often attributed to François Truffaut that it’s impossible to create a truly anti-war movie because the act of portraying war necessarily glorifies it in some way by pulling us so deep into the micro that the big picture disappears.

With no real explanation of what exactly the soldiers are hoping to accomplish and an intimate focus on the physical toll of combat, the film subverts the grand gestures of even the most noble anti-war films. It’s a movie that feels deeply interior; focused not only on the inside of this one family home but also the painful fragility of the human body. It’s a movie without heroism or noble sacrifices; instead, it’s a relentless sequence of senseless violence.

As is typical of some “based on a true story” films, Warfare ends with a photo montage featuring the real soldiers and people featured in the film. The decision to include this sequence, rather than humanize the events even further, adds another layer of disruption to the movie. For reasons untold, nearly everyone involved declined to have their real identity known, so we’re left with blurred and obscured images that only emphasize the shady pointlessness of the whole endeavour. Are people opting out for reasons of self-protection or shame? The film doesn’t commit a clear answer, though it does so little to suggest any nobility in any of the fighting that it’s nearly impossible to walk away from the movie with anything other than contempt for the people portrayed.

While far more nuanced than some of the advertisements might suggest, Warfare remains a difficult film to recommend. It’s a painfully unpleasant experience that may be conceptually interesting as a deconstruction of war-film tropes, but overflows with so much spiritual and physical ugliness that it’s difficult in good conscience to recommend that people seek it out. ■

Warfare opens in Montreal theatres on Friday, April 11.

Warfare (directed by Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza)

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