Before having directed a single film, Alex Garland already created a strong reputation in the world of gender cinema. Presented to Danny Boyle through his novel The beachThat Boyle adapted to a 2000 film starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Garland collaborated more directly with Boyle in his next high profile project, 28 days laterthat properly brought the zombie movie of the dead. From there, they changed the least seen but absolutely sensationalist Sunshinea science fiction film with horror nuances, better described as a Armageddon With a narrower budget, less oboxes and a better class of space madness.
But Garland really reached his account as a brand filmmaker with his debut as director Ex machinaA three -hand programmer on a computer programmer (Domhnall Gleason) selected by a technology CEO (Oscar Isaac) to test the realistic robotic life (Alicia Vikander). Between that and the strangest AnnihilationGarland was established as a post-nolean science fiction author, the director’s son who, like Denis Villeneuve, is venerated by the silent seriousness with which the material treats, as well as the demanding compositions in which he demands it. While the films he wrote to focus on the people who bind or collectively tear in the response to existential threats, the films of the films of a director of a director of smaller scale where humanity is, war.
Or at least they used to do it. Around the last year, Garland has unexpectedly revived as chronicler or real war. Following the most allegorical (and even more stripped) MenA kind of haunted film where the ghost is male toxicity, Garland returned last year with its greatest success so far: Civil warA divisive film that imagines the last days of an armed conflict within the thesis of the United States, after a group of photographs while covering the conflict. There was a trace of the fantastic (well, beyond the idea that California and Texas could agree to form a team), but the premise of the alternative world is faced by a kinship with their science fiction films. Your new complementary film WarThinking, confirms that Garland’s interests (at least for the moment) do not see our world with the windows of another world. Rather, he wants to look at the soldiers in the clearest and most varied way possible.
Garland co -wrote and co -directed the film with Ray Mendoza, his military advisor in Civil warAnd it is based on Mendoza’s experiences in the Iraq war, or rather, it is based on a specific experience in 2006. WarPresented more or less in real time, follow a group of Seal from the Navy locked in a civil building. They are attacked, some soldiers are kurados and have to try to evacuate. That is the story, rebuilt to the collective memories of the Mendoza team. Although a group of Hollywood actors plays the Poulter of the soldiers, Charles Melton, Joseph Quinn, Cosmo Jarvis, Michael Gandolfini and D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai are among the established artists who are facnizable, of the usual. Perhaps it is heavy military gear, or perhaps it is the nature of the material, which has so much immediately and likelihood that plotula thoughts of character arches, plot points and other narrative daughters. The idea seems to combine documentary realism with the control and mastery of fiction cinema.
So how did Garland here, from the speculative science fiction funds to the observation funds without ornaments or the people in combat? There are military elements of 28 days later and Annihilation Indicating some interest in the dynamics of the armed forces, but those films, especially the zombie image, show a certain skepticism towards the military command chain. With WarGarland has returned to respect the troops, taking the attempt to impartiality that he occupied so many about Civil war to a stylistic end. Value judgments do not enter into history; These are people, doing their job, for better or for evil, risking their own lives and the lives of others. It can be an exaggeration to describe the film as neutral, because it certainly causes a possible range of reactions; It is almost impossible to make a combat film that has not done so. But neither does the film feel ambiguous about what it portrays, even if the feelings are intentionally ambivalent. It is an experience, in the first place.
In those terms, as a combat film supposedly built from memories, War It is effective, although it may not be as broken as its creators seem to think. Many films have tried to make the public feel closer to the horrors of war, white through virtuous and stylized chaos of Saving Ryan Private; The high intensity of the frame speed of Billy Lynn’s long half -time walk; or the Ultra character study near The wounded locker. Those films imposed more narrative about their material, of course, but in any case, War It is interesting for similar reasons, not your refusal to play the game. Inevitably, any film, also one with aspirations towards objectivity, must emphasize certain elements about others (especially when it takes viewers to an experience as deeply subjective as memories of war). What stands out in this next to the most traditional battlefield films and Cliché is their attention to the injured; The film persists in the pain of two soldiers who are seriously injured by a IUD, and that Fulow’s soldiers must do everything possible to treat. Their screams of pain are not used to quickly illustrate a point before cutting or moving towards a tragic but fast end; Agony remains audible, the attempts of disorderly triage. The majority of the film is not strategically deployed weapons or attack plans. It is about temporarily stopping bleeding.
That is a metaphor of the Iraq war as good as any other. Why now, thought? Is it only after almost 20 years that the public can handle such an unwavering look at modern combat, or Garland is unsatisfied with the constant flow of films that have tried (granted, to stir) to portray Iraq’s war? Only with the participation of Mendoza, there is a slight air of tourism for the increasingly anti-peculative experiments of films and thought that are less reflective or experimental than they appear for the first time. On their way, both Civil war and War It reflects a certain despair about the ability to violence of humanity, but Garland’s science fiction films (and, in the case, Men) Feel more willing to face the present. Likewise Civil warA more traditional suspense and attractive story than War With a permanent interest in the mechanics of war journalism, it seems less than genuinely curious about real social or cultural divisions. Around the launch of Civil warThe garland was a drummer or affected a child or both ascendants that you have. War It is convincing evidence that seeks something else, although it is equally frustrating: a way of examining history not as a lens for the future, but as a vote exercise in the chin in false journalism.
Jesse Hassenger (@Rockmaroned) He is a writer who lives in Brooklyn Podcasting ATE www.sportsalcohol.com. He is the usual collaborator of the AV Club, Polygon and the week, among others.