If I asked you to picture a war movie, what is the first thing you envision?
It could be the gritty realism of Lewis Milestone’s All Quiet on the Western Front. You may picture a class of naive young men thrust into a desolate wasteland strewn with wire and bodies. You may considering the suffering. The death. The misery.
Or perhaps your mind jumped to Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbor. New images of American flags and destruction come to mind; you’re witnessing an attack on America’s freedom by a nefarious enemy, and the heroics of those who defend it.
Alternatively, your mind may jump to spectacle of Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, picturing soldiers cowering in fear on a beach, clawing their way out of sinking ships and scrambling out of a oil stained sea.
Not only are these depictions of war vastly inconsistent with each other but they also depict the vastly different intentions of cinema in its presentation of conflict.
Cinema’s close relationship with war first arose from the Spanish-American War of 1898, where images of the conflict where broadcast back home through the medium of film. Short documentaries, referred to as “actualities” were broadcast to America in order to grow domestic support for the conflict with films such as Burial of the Maine victims causing outrage domestically, contributing to a jingoistic and revanchist public fervour in support of the war. Before the conflict had even ended filmmakers had learned to use reenactment battles and cinematic set pieces to further their depiction of the conflict. Cinema’s use as a propaganda tool was beginning to be discovered.
However, emerging from the devastation of the first world war, film found a new way to express the despair, suffering and collective trauma. Movies such as the enormously impactful All Quiet on the Western Front aim for a realistic depiction of war. Exploring the themes such as the horror of war, psychological effects of war on soldiers and the reality of nationalism. War was instead displayed to the public as a disgusting ordeal that must be avoided. This film was so effective in its pacifist and fundamentally anti-war messages it was banned in multiple countries, including Nazi Germany, France and Italy, for fear of its effects upon ideas of nationalism and militarism.
While film has been used to impede nationalistic agendas, its ability to promote them has not be disregarded by film makers and governments alike. Throughout the Cold War two distinct types of war movies emerged; those adverse to war and those installing patriotic ideas to covertly promote it. While films like Platoon and Apocalypse Now display war as a great cause of suffering, other’s such as The Battle of the Bulge, Ivan’s Childhood and Midway instead depict it as the landscape of heroes and patriotic sacrifice. Here, war was glorified and the nation celebrated, being depicted as a more distant spectacle than a grim reality.
A new depiction of war on screen has also emerged, one that focuses on both war as a spectacle and as a reality. Driven by technical innovation and a desire to subvert the already well defined genre that preceded him, Christopher Nolan film Dunkirk acts as a vast departure from prior depictions of war. It presents a spectacle – immaculate cinematography, a generous budget and outstanding direction bring the spectacle of war to life, but not in the way one might expect. The film diverts from conventions of heroism, emotional backstories and patriotic triumph to instead deliver a realistic and anti war message: in war there are no heroes, only survivors.
Film has displayed its ability to both decry war and promote the values which fuel it, depict a reality and a fictitious spectacle and portray soldiers as both heroes and victims. The effects of cinema on public sentiment cannot be understated and the use of film as propaganda cannot be disregarded. Perhaps it is time we look more critically at the values cinema presents and the subconscious effects it may have.
This is great. I mostly enjoy the doco biographies where filmmakers use the input of veterans or actual footage. You have a good handful on here which some I need to watch and decide upon. Whether Hollywood films or not I think the accountability in the story matters as well as the sense of emotion. In any portrayal of war, this is what we must understand to see war how it actually is. Which as you mentioned is sometimes not what we want to be faced with. And I can say some war films can have untrue depictions of those emotions or testimonies which is why we must be backed with evidence and real experiences to remain intact with history. I also feel that would never be enough encounters that could widely be introduced to the world through a film in order to spread truth or remind us of grateful reality.
This is fantastic and right up my alley. History is a performance which can never be entirely separated from its creators and performers, and war films are a perfect example of this phenomenon. Reading your post reminded me of how, in the US, anti-Japanese sentiment was provoked through inaccurate (and downright false) narratives of American and Hawaiian Japanese citizens conspiring against the United States government.
There’s a quote by George Orwell (cliche, I know) which I always return to, as the underlying philosophy reminds me of what you have written about here: ‘All art is propaganda.’ Whether the art is relative to war, to peacetime, to a supporting opinion, or a dissenting one, all art- all performances- propagate messages and meanings which we, the consumers, must critically examine and evaluate.