Time has not been kind to the Iraq War — a conflict based on a lie about "weapons of mass destruction," resulting in a devastating death toll and increasing violent instability in the country. Public perception of the war has been disdainful at best.
What often gets left out of this political perspective, however, is a more granular look at what the war was like for the individuals on the ground. Alex Garland, directing and writing alongside Iraq War veteran Ray Mendoza, gives audiences a microcosm of the war in the form of a breathtaking and visceral experience in his latest film, Warfare.
Working within a tight 95-minute time frame, Garland and Mendoza bring to cinematic life a real-time accounting of a surveillance mission during the Battle of Ramadi in November 2006. The goal of the mission was to infiltrate an urban residential area at night in an Al Qaeda-controlled part of Iraq to ensure the safe passage of ground troops the following day. A team of American Navy SEALs split into three groups, with Op 1 taking over the second floor of an apartment building to conduct enemy surveillance.
Op 1 was comprised of a small group of SEALs, including communications officer Mendoza (played in the film by D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai), and sniper and medic Elliot Miller (Cosmo Jarvis). During the course of the surveillance, Op 1 takes fire and an IED drop severely injures two of the SEALs, Miller and Petty Officer Sam (based on Joe Hildebrand and played by an excellent Joseph Quinn).
During a Q&A held in Toronto after an advanced screening of the film, Mendoza explained to the audience that the real-life Elliot didn't have any memories of the attack, and Warfare was Mendoza's attempt at showing Elliot what had happened — what Mendoza saw, heard and felt.
Garland and Mendoza's partnership is exemplary in this endeavour, with Mendoza providing the story and accuracy, and Garland using his tremendous filmmaking abilities to place audiences as close to seeing, hearing and feeling Mendoza's perspective as possible. Arguably, the sound design does the most work in this respect, bombarding audiences with the sounds of explosions and gunfire, and, on a more horrific level, inspiring a guttural reaction to the cries of pain from Elliot and Sam.
One curious aspect of the film is the lack of information it gives audiences. Garland and Mendoza don't offer any backstory or exposition around the individual soldiers or even the mission itself; the filmmakers leave audiences to their own devices to piece together the film, which serves the overarching effect of the movie very well. In contrast to most narrative films that will add scenes and bits of dialogue to further a plot point, Warfare includes only what those in Op 1 recalled — nothing more, nothing less.
The graphic nature of Warfare doesn't necessarily ask audiences to reconsider our personal thoughts on the Iraq War, whether positive or negative. The effect of the film is to make audiences consider aspects of that war — what troops endured, what Iraqi civilians went through.
Exactly this time last year, Garland released Civil War, a movie inexplicably left out of the awards conversation — but one that Exclaim! recognized as one of the year's best — and one that captured our divided reality through a fictional American conflict. Warfare, while entirely based in reality, shares similarities with Civil War in its political ambiguity, something many found flawed about the latter.
Taking the two together, Garland successfully continues his mission to challenge audiences to grasp the humanity within a conflict, even among viewers whose politics may not agree.