A review of the recent remake of “All Quiet On The Western Front” suggested that the power of cinema, its overwhelming effect on emotions, its direct, visceral hold, means that films about war, even those with an anti-war message, draw us into the terrible spectacle. At the same time, films that point to the moral dilemmas of war, such as Kubrick’s Paths of Glory accept the general backdrop of the war, suggesting only that “bad decisions” or venal officers are the problem with war.
Thoughts?
Check out King of Hearts (1966).
Kropotkin is in good company here: Anti-war film - Wikipedia
Several filmmakers and critics have been quoted as stating that “there is no such thing as an anti-war film”, first attributed to François Truffaut. This school of criticism argues that cinema is inherently “an inadequate medium through which to convey the horrors of conflict” and that any such portrayal of combat and violence will always glorify warfare on some level, even if only through the death of the author. Supposedly failed anti-war films in this regard include Full Metal Jacket and Saving Private Ryan; the former was decried as “another goddamn recruiting film” by Samuel Fuller, while the latter was criticized by Toby Miller as legitimizing the United States as the military savior of the world.
I think The Deer Hunter powerfully captures the psychological toll of war on working-class American men, focusing more on trauma than heroics.
Yes, I think so…if a film were to show the inevitable results of war.
The problem is that many films that do show the horrors of war (often at the beginning of the film) seem to move on to glorifying it by the end.
Ironically, one that generally does not do this is Glory. The ending note of the film is not unlike the beginning.
How about M*A*S*H? None of the main characters wants to be there, and all we see of the war at large is the constant stream of dying and dead soldiers.
And Dr. Strangelove is a pitch-black anti-war satire that exposes the absurdity of war when egos, paranoia, and incompetence are in charge of the nuclear button.
^^As well as testosterone poisoning.
I agree with Truffaut et al. that cinema’s power at depicting action makes it a dicey medium for antiwar statements, due to the propensity for viscerality swamping thoughtfulness. In my view, the most powerful antiwar movies avoid battle scenes or omit them entirely. I’m thinking about The Human Condition, Threads, Come and See, Au Revoir Les Enfants, that kind of thing — i.e., don’t get distracted by the action, think about the larger madness and suffering.
I think anti-war movies succeed when they focus on the consequences of violence, not the violence itself. The Killing Fields is an example of a movie that does that.
Yeah, a couple of cartoons come to mind: When the wind blows and Grave of the Fireflies
In both cases we don’t see any fighting between combatants (IIRC). But we hear some propaganda or jingoist messages amidst the horrific reality.
A movie which does feature a bit of conflict, though again focuses mostly on the aftermath is Threads.
I guess this is what it takes to make an anti-war movie. If you show too much actual conflict between combatants, they’ll inevitably be a protagonist, or at least the audience might be rooting for some war aim or another to succeed.
Yeah, but you get to drink, carouse with nurses, pull pranks on officers, play football for big bux, smoke weed, steal free drugs for recreation - the list just goes on. Hell, war is fun!
One could put Full Metal Jacket in that category methinks.
But to most viewers it looks like summer camp.
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This scene from The Americanization Of Emily comes to mind:
I’d include Distant Thunder as an anit-war movie with no battle scenes. Note: this is the 1973 film by Satyajit Ray, not the Ralph Macchio/John Lithgow from 1988.
Casualties of War, a Vietnam film with Michael J. Fox.
DW Griffith’s The Fall of Babylon (the Babylon sequences edited from Intolerance, and rereleased as a stand-alone film) isn’t primarily meant to be anti-war, albeit, it is, sort of secondarily, I guess, is very effective. I very much doubt recruitment went up in any city where The Fall of Babylon was playing.
I remember Eye in the Sky as being pretty anti-war, with a focus on the dehumanizing aspects of American drone pilots in desert trailers killing people thousands of miles away with what looks like gaming controllers.
The Convenant is not entirely anti-war, but it does highlight how we shamefully abandoned many of our Afghan allies and interpreters after we pulled out.
An older satire/comedy, The Pentagon Wars, makes light of the crazy bureaucracy that led to the development of the Bradley vehicle.
I think with any nuanced war movie, your own mindset going into it will determine how much of an anti-war message you walk away with. Presumably a teenager amped up from video games and watching these just for the explosions might not have the same level of reflection a more mature adult would…
Speaking of video games, they actually made a video game adaptation of Apocalypse Now / The Heart of Darkness, but they set in the era of our Middle-Eastern conflicts: Spec Ops: The Line - Wikipedia
That game was deliberately anti-war in its narrative and character building, but the same criticism was levied against it: that the “power of gaming” couldn’t help but draw players into the sheer spectacle of war, in a way that caused many players (and publishing execs) to altogether miss the narrative nuances and treat it as just another first-person shooter. One article: Five Years Later, 'Spec Ops: The Line' Still Hates Military Bullshit
It’s quite different from explicitly anti-war games told from the perspective of survivors rather than soldiers, like This War of Mine.