Film news: Iraq War veteran describes making Alex Garland's ‘Warfare’ as ‘therapeutic’
One of A24’s most recent releases, Warfare, has caught the attention of many in the world of cinema.
Its visceral, boots-on-the-ground depiction of the Second Gulf War feels somehow different to many other war films we see these days.
Film News Blitz’s Joe Matthews delves into what makes it special.
A fly on the wall
Warfare is the story of a Navy SEAL team that embeds into the house of an Iraqi family during a 2006 operation gone wrong.
As the audience, we follow the operation as if we are in the rooms with the soldiers, and it takes a unique real-time approach - when someone says that something will happen in two minutes, we have to observe how painstaking those two minutes can feel.
Therapeutic?
In an interview with Sky News, Ray Mendoza, a communications officer on the operation in question, who helped direct Warfare, described the process of making such a traumatic and gritty film as “therapeutic”.
He said: "It actually mended a lot of relationships. There were some guys I hadn't spoken to in a very long time. And this allowed us to bury the hatchet, so to speak, on some issues from that day."
He also described how inaccurate depictions of military culture can make veterans feel towards military movies, saying: "You feel like no one cares because they didn't get it right. You feel invisible. You feel forgotten."
However, with Warfare being made, in co-director/writer Alex Garland’s words, as “an attempt to recreate something as faithfully and accurately as we could”, it was shown to over 1,000 veterans before general release to gauge how good of a job they had done.
Mendoza, who is now a Hollywood stuntman and gunfight coordinator, said: "They finally feel heard. They finally feel like somebody got it right.
"It's not triggering. I would say it's the opposite, for a veteran at least."
A brutal reality
Something that makes Warfare stand out is how Garland completely refrains from any sort of glorification of war, or the American military.
Having discussed how accurate and realistic he wanted this project to be, he also said how the film is “anti-war in as much as it is better if war does not happen.
“That is about the most obvious statement about life on this planet that one could make."
He goes on to say: "To be anti-war to me is a rational position, and most veterans I've met are anti-war."
‘Civil War’
Civil War is the Garland’s most recent work prior to Warfare, and it tackles the brutalism of combat in a very different manner.
Set in a fictional future, where a civil war has erupted in the United States, the story follows a group of war photographers as they travel alongside the conflict as it comes to a dying close.
Both films tackle themes of ‘war is hell’, but they attack it in strikingly dissimilar ways.
Where Civil War draws out close to two hours, we follow the main ensemble on an exhausting week-long journey, as they witness the horrors of warfare first-hand.
They see war crimes take place, and get caught in the crossfire on a number of occasions.
On the other hand, Warfare is incredibly tense in its delivery, and for 90 minutes we are embroiled in the horrors of war ourselves.
Garland, at just the second time of trying, seems to have cracked the code for making a striking war film, and with Mendoza at his side, it looks as though Warfare is set to be seen as one of the films of the year in 2025.
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