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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Anti War Films

  
  

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Spaniel
19:55 / 25.01.06
Well, for a start the first half of the film pretty clearly suggests that the machine of war - the military - alienates young men and women to a rather horrific extent.

Now, whilst that's a pretty oblique attack on war as a means to a politcal end, it certainly looks like an attack.
 
 
PatrickMM
20:05 / 25.01.06
But at the same time, I've seen fratboy types and people who actually wanted to enlist in the military quoting the drill instructor's lines as jokes, looking up to this guy as a funny, quotable dude. The opening half of FMJ was pretty clearly intended to show the dehumanization of the recruits, but if you're looking the other way at some stuff, you could just view it as some funny jokes about steers and queers.

And I guess that's the essential paradox of this threat, the same stuff that repels the liberal minded pacifist will entrance people looking for something different. In Jarhead, you can see the scene that probably inspired Swofford's quote, wherein the marines watch the "Smell of napalm" scene and cheer as a village is blown away.
 
 
TeN
20:18 / 25.01.06
also, it could be argued that alienation is necessary to create good soldiers (and I happen to agree with that, despite being anti-war). it's not something the Army is going to use for their commercials on TV, but it's certainly a policy they adhere to (do some reading up on "depersonalization").

also, speaking of R. Lee Ermey (who played the drill sergent) - he's a retired U.S. Marine Corps drill instructor, a Vietnam vet, and has played numerous military roles in films (Apocalypse Now, Toy Soldiers, Toy Story) as well as hosting the military history/technology show Mail Call. not exactly the poster child for the anti-war movement, if you know what I mean. it makes perfect sense that he's idoloized by military-bound fratboys.
 
 
Spaniel
20:45 / 25.01.06
also, it could be argued that alienation is necessary to create good soldiers

Yes, yes, of course*, but is the film engaging with that argument, or does it have other ambitions? Personally I think it barely touches on that debate, rather FMJ focuses on the appalling personal consequences of the process.

Oh, and, Patrick, it really goes without saying that morons can misinterpret just about anything.


*Or maybe not, I have no idea. It's hardly my area of expertise
 
 
Jack Fear
00:13 / 26.01.06
The Sarge became a culture hero for a reason, y'know. The Stern Father archetype is powerfully attractive to a lot of people—even thoughtful, intelligent people.

And that "alienation" that we're talking about is similarly attractive. Magical types call it "ego annihilation." Other folks call it "building character." Submerging yourself in the group identity, becoming part of something bigger than yourself. "War is a force that gives us meaning," remember?

The alienation, the training, is empowering to the individual. It's a rite of passage, a rite of manhood, a place here even a dumb lardass like Pyle can discover a hidden talent. Getting strong, learning discipline and honor. Comradeship. Unity. Strength.

Those elements are all there, in FMJ. And if it all goes horribly wrong in the end, if Pyle snaps... well, then the ability to diostance and rationalize kicks in: Pyle was a fuckup to begin with, wasn't he? That certainly wouldn't happen to you or me.
 
 
De Selby
01:37 / 26.01.06
I think FMJ ends up taking a negative position on war, but one that defines it as necessary to fulfill our primal need to hurt each other.

The first part of the film is about "shaving off" those parts of a person un-necessary for war, which implies that there is a part in all of us that is at least supporting violence and war. The second part is showing exactly what the effects of doing that are.

By ending the film with the mickey mouse song, it sort of undermines the whole argument as ridiculous. As if to admit defeat and say that we're never going to be able to stop fighting each other or making war.

My thoughts anyway.

I don't agree with the comments about Apocalypse Now and Milius above. He only wrote the original draft of the script anyway didn't he? And from my memory of it, it ends with Willard shooting heroin into his arm or something similarly ludicrous. I'm pretty sure Coppola wrote the majority of the shooting script.

I think Ran is probably the ultimate anti-war film. But do samurai war films count?
 
 
matthew.
02:48 / 26.01.06
For some, any war film is actually pro-war. To wit, one of my former friends was a racist, anti-semite, homophobic, Republican whose greatest wish in life was to enlist and kill some [insert racial slur here]s. He saw tons of war movies and loved them all, no matter their political stance. He understood rationally that movies such as Blackhawk Down and FMJ and Shaving Ryan's Privates are anti-war, but he simply loved to watch the violence, what he dubbed the "combat porn". So, in showing any violence, any of this "combat porn" the film was immediately good in this young man's head. The film was also immediately glamourizing the violence: he wanted to be a part of it, no matter what.
(Also, I can understand the confusion over FMJ. I thought it was pro-war the first time I saw it. Then I started thinking about the dehumanizing part, the whole loss of innocence, and whatever else film-school crap... Now I think it's neutral: a war film)
 
 
Supaglue
08:28 / 26.01.06
As talked about ealier, I think the hardest thing in making a successful anti-war film is keeping a realisitc grip on an unrealistic experience - the problem with war is hell is that hell, as far as film goes, tends to be quite exciting - however horrible.

Then there's the difficulty of mixing this with the dullness that soldiers seemt o experience between the actual fighting.

One of the best films to get behind the violence aspect of war and into the institutionalized blind thinking the armed forces require and the melting pot of prejudice and callousness that undoubtedly exists in the army is The Hill.

For those who haven't seen it the IMDB plot summary:

WWII, in a British disciplinary camp located in the Libyan desert. Prisoners are persecuted by Staff Sergeant Williams, who made them climb again and again, under the heavy sun, an artificial hill built right in the middle of the camp. Harris is a more human and compassionate guard, but the chief, S.M. Wilson, refuses to disown his subordinate Williams. One day, five new prisoners arrive. Each of them will deal in a different way with the authority and Williams' ferocity.

Although I suppose it's not a war film per se, it overviews the army ethos: unquestioningly obeying orders, pointless exercises, racism, class, boredom,and so on.
 
 
Spaniel
13:50 / 26.01.06
Sure, Sarge is an attractive figure (I was a little glib in my comeback to Patrick), but, to take us back to my original concern, to suggest that war is attractive to individuals isn't to argue *for* war. That's not to say you couldn't construct an argument around that premise, just that FMJ doesn't.
As for war giving us purpose, well, that's a bigger, if closely related, issue, which I think the film addresses on at least two levels. First of all we have the death of Pile* and the deaths of the soldiers in Vietnam - if war does offer purpose and meaning then it is at the cost of young men's lives, a cost that is pretty clearly signposted as abhorrent. Secondly, as far as I can remember - and forgive me if I'm talking entirely out of my arse as I'm working from memory, here - Joker - functioning as a kind of deconstructivist device - reveals the meaning or meanings of war to be at best fractured and at worst insubstantial, as he teases to the surface the inherent inconsistencies, absurdities and horrors of military conflict.

I think there's more here, but I'll need to watch the movie again to get at it.

Also, just quickly, I really don't care what Kubrick had to say about the film. For a start I only have TeN's word for it that he said that at all - and I have no idea what his sources are. Secondly, even if he did say that, I'm still unclear about his intended meaning. And, thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, sometimes the author isn't the best judge of his own work.


*We would do well to remember that the (very, very unpleasant) death of Pile isn't merely an event, it is the culmination of the first half of the movie. It's also the flavour left in our mouths as we go into the second half, and as such is supposed to inform the rest of our viewing experience
 
 
grant
20:38 / 27.01.06
Would Regeneration count?

Wilfred Owen is one of the characters -- the poet who wrote Dulce Et Decorum Est. It's about him and Siegfried Sassoon at an asylum during World War I.

Not so much on the bang-bang love the smell of mustard gas stuff, and has Jonathan Pryce as a hard-assed commanding officer forced to face the horror of war.

I think the key to "anti-war" in this and in Ran is that the people in positions of power & safety are consumed by horror.
 
 
Whisky Priestess
21:39 / 28.01.06
I'm gonna find it interesting to see how Jarhead the film compares to the book (which I read in preparation and then failed to see the film) - cos in the book at least, Swofford's narrative voice is constantly commenting negatively on the events he's describing: while at the same time admitting that he, too, gets off on the bloodnguts of Apocalypse Now, he's well aware of the irony of this, now (i.e. ten years hence, when he was writing the book) - and, it's implied, at the time.

Although he does ponce on a bit too much about reading The Iliad on the battlefront for my taste though. Wanker.
 
 
Mug Chum
15:39 / 13.02.07
Just adding my two cents.

I remember watching Private Ryan at the age of 12, and at those first 20 minutes I was fuckin' horrified goin' "I'll never play a goddamn war videogame again"! Something about the sound at that theater and the first pseudo-documentary realistic depiction of battle really punched me in the back of my head. But wait 'cause there's more...

Well nowadays, a bit older, it seems that the whole effect of "War is Hell" was indeed intentional only to be co-opted into the larger pro-war nobility honor stance or whatever. The more horrid the hell, the better. And Black Hawk Down was that same effect in a even cheaper way. I remember sitting through that fucking movie feeling like I was watching a 20 hour add for Counter-Strike or Delta Force.

And, of course, that goes into videogames too, so closely tied to those movies. It's no surprise that about 3-4 years (the time it takes to develop a game) after Private Ryan all sorts of "truly-realistic" ww2 games adding Ryan's Privates (you read it right) characteristics (wasteland chaos, smoke, flying sand and debris, dirt, unpleasantness, grime, random massive casualties, massive choir of chaotic shouts, blood&guts&members, bobbing POV-cameras, wrecking odds, pure uncertainty and fear) started to appear like pop-ups on a seedy website trying to recreate the fear and horror of those scenes and their defeats. On about my 4th viewing of Private Ryan, even I was more like "wow it'd be a really good game if they'd put that undesiredness factor into them". Won't be long until they attempt to reproduce and simulate not only the superficial (?) aspects of battle but also the most real-life horrid sensation of killing a human being, the guilt, the senseless feel, the emotional wrecking, the waste, the there's-no-coming-back-now, the profanation into hell, the utter loss of every trace of 'innocence', the doom, the filth -- and people would bloody love it. Fuck, if you make the most realistically possible game where you have to, in the most awfully realistically manner, deal with a soldier's wound, that will be flying off the shelves. Don't even get me started on EA's profits if you could kill a baby in his mother's arms in Vietnam in a way that makes you feel realistically like losing your soul and going mad (maybe a mad rush).

"War is Hell" was new perhaps in the seventies to mainstream movies. In the 90ies and so forth, was "War is Hell: you really think I'm a pussy to not go through that threshold?". I mean, Spielberg's ten years old film (damn, time goes by) was already the "listen momma's-boy, the more hateable the hell, the more of a hardened Lancelot you'll come out that other side, maybe even as Arthur".

------------------

I still think the best "anti-war" movie is Dr. Strangelove, if only for it's "freudian" sexual-bodily-aware undertones throughout the ENTIRE film (and not just here-and-there, like most places I read) on war and war movies & fiction (I could go about this film for a month -- there are just too many good laugh-out-loud jokes, and most of them comes through a tunnel that's too rich and at the same time too simple to be named just as "anti-war").
 
 
GogMickGog
16:13 / 13.02.07
Isn't it a much stated problem that -inspite of directorial intentions- war tends to, uh, look rather exciting on film? The much mentioned opening to 'Saving Private Ryan' was horrible and mucky and oh-so-real but let's not pretend we weren't all on the edge of our seats, eh?

For my money, 'Idi I Smotri'/'Come and See' remains pretty much the benchmark for the 'harowing war movie experience'. It depicts the advance of the Nazis across the Russian countryside, as seen through the eyes of a young boy. Words cannot express how deeply this film marked me: at times it is charged with a psychedelic intensity, particularly as the protagonist falls from innocence. According to film lore, the young actor was hypnotised so as to relieve him from the potential trauma caused by the filming.

The whole thing is shot in a grainy, grubby film stock and carries a general air of 'last days of man', apocolyptic suffering on a vast, painting like canvas. To some extent it is Soviet propaganda, but regardless of creed one gets the impression that a statement along the lines of 'weren't the Nazis bastards' is rather hard to argue with.

So, yuh, like I say, no barrel of laughs.
 
  

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