A WAR (Krigen) B
Denmark (115 mi) 2015
d: Tobias Lindholm Official
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Denmark sent 9,500 military personnel to Afghanistan between
January 2002 and July 1, 2013, according to Danish reports, which totals more
than 60% of their entire military force, where 42 soldiers were eventually
killed, more per capita than any other European country. Making matters worse, Denmark aired a
blockbuster TV drama series that was screened throughout Europe that was
entitled The Killing (Forbrydelsen)
(2007, 2009, 2012) where in the second season the story veered into a mass
cover-up of civilian killings in Afghanistan involving Danish soldiers, which
was further accentuated by the release of Janus Metz Pedersen’s incendiary
documentary film ARMADILLO (2010) that won the Critic’s Week 1st Place Grand
Prize award at Cannes in 2010. Armadillo
was the name of the operating base in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan
where the filmmaker spent six months with Danish soldiers who were situated
less than a kilometer away from Taliban positions, where at one point they are
caught in a hellish firefight with insurgents that was partly filmed by a
camera strapped to one soldier’s helmet, where the dire situation they found
themselves in only resolved itself following the success of a hand
grenade. What shocked the Danish public
were the comments of a young soldier who claimed they were exhilarated
afterwards, high on adrenaline, and just sprayed the vicinity with machine-gun
fire, killing everyone, wounded or dead, then posed for pictures (reminiscent
of Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner
abuse) that portrayed themselves as boastful heroes next to piles of dead
bodies, which led to a political inquiry and opened up questions back home
about the morality of their mission.
While there have been American films depicting the nightmarish
psychological effect on soldiers sent to war regions, like Kathryn Bigelow’s The
Hurt Locker (2008) and Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger’s Restrepo (2010),
and prior to that, DEER HUNTER (1978), showing the destabilizing effects of the
Vietnam War, this is one of the few films depicting what is essentially a
Danish view of the war, something not really seen since the devastating ethical
dilemma of Susan Bier’s BROTHERS (2004).
As the co-writer of Thomas Vinterberg’s The
Hunt (Jagten) (2012) and the writer/director of A
Hijacking (Kapringen) (2012), Lindholm has established himself as a
guardian of emotional authenticity, never overdramatizing situations that are
intensely real and bracingly uncomfortable.
A welcome relief from the overly simplistic, hero worship
trends that have defined American war movies of late, which are little more
than patriot adulation, where Michael Bay’s latest, 13 HOURS: THE SECRET
SOLDIERS OF BENGHAZI (2016), has been referred to in political debates and
played in rented stadiums by Republican candidates running for President
(namely Donald Trump in Iowa), generating some chilling comments by Christopher
Hooks from Gawker, January 15, 2016,
who witnessed the world premiere at the AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas,
home of the Dallas Cowboys football team, often referred to as “America’s
team,” I
Watched Michael Bay's Benghazi Movie at Cowboys Stadium With 30,000
Pissed-Off Patriots:
Bay has an almost pornographic feel
for the physics of modern war: The cartoon arcs of RPGs in flight; the
swiveling, passionless eye of a Predator Drone; expensive, bullet-riddled cars
careening through city streets; planes and helicopters and technicals and men
with guns, all in hues bordering on the psychedelic. But the human element is
less firmly in his grasp, and the moral landscape of the movie is poisonous.
In the first decade after 9/11,
Hollywood didn’t really know how to handle America’s new wars. To the extent
films addressed them at all, they tended to focus on how they damaged ordinary
people. Movies like Home of the Brave, In
the Valley of Elah, and The Hurt
Locker were not uplifting—at their worst, they could be moralizing and
turgid. And they were not successful. The broader culture honored the
rank-and-file men and women who sacrificed to fight America’s wars: Support the troops.
In the last few years, as the wars changed
shape and expanded, a strange thing happened. The culture began to focus not on
ordinary soldiers, but on extraordinary ones—Navy SEALs, special forces
operators, military contractors. The movies changed—Act of Valor, Lone Survivor, American Sniper. They celebrate
heroes, they take place in a vacuum of political context, and they’re hugely
profitable. Strangely, they cater to people who think Hollywood hates them.
Film studios, suddenly, learned to love the wars.
13
Hours fits neatly in this new genre. It’s a story told from the perspective
of men of extraordinary martial prowess in a deeply unfamiliar and hostile
place, surrounded by faceless and unknowable enemies, desperate to survive.
It’s a siege movie, and the major plot points would make just as much sense if
they were transposed to a movie about a zombie attack, or an alien invasion.
Perhaps in response to bombastic Hollywood overkill, this
Danish film, among the five finalists in the Best Foreign Film category at the
Oscars, is instead a more measured and intelligent approach, scrutinizing the
effects of the Afghan war on multiple fronts, not just the frontline soldiers,
but their families back home, while also evaluating the overall impact this has
on a rapidly developing, modern European perspective. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been
the first wars Denmark has fought since the Second World War, immersing a new
generation of youth into combat situations, where families become invested in
the wounded or the dead, where in a small nation of 5.5 million, it’s hard not
to know someone who was affected. Using
real soldiers instead of extras, Lindholm’s insistence upon unflinching realism
places the viewers on the front lines in another film about normal people stuck
in abnormal situations. We see the war
largely from the Company commander’s viewpoint, Claus Pedersen (Pilou Asbaek),
who’s attempting to establish trust with the locals of Helmand province in a
peace-keeping mission, but it’s a difficult proposition, as the villagers are caught
in between opposing forces, where they are visited by the Danish NATO
peace-keeping forces by day, while the Taliban make threats against them by
night. Even those with good intentions
may feel paralyzed, rather than emboldened, by this seemingly futile power
struggle. Early on Claus loses one of
his men when a young soldier strays slightly off path and gets blown up by an
IED, or hidden roadside bomb that is buried just below the surface. This has a way of unnerving Claus’s men, in
particular one soldier named Lasse (Dulfi Al-Jabouri) who was particularly
close to the deceased. As a way of
calming his men down, he steps outside of the commander’s tent and accompanies
the men on daily patrols, where his daily presence has a way of reassuring
them. This is ironic, as back home we
see his wife Maria (Tuva Novotny) struggle with raising three children alone,
especially the oldest son who has been getting into fights at school, clearly
missing his father and in need of the same reassuring guidance that Pedersen
provides his men. Despite the distance
between them, Claus tries to call home at regular intervals, maintaining
personal contact, where there are parallels between the difficulties
encountered with communicating with his family and the challenges of
maintaining good relations with a local community that is highly suspicious of
their presence. In each case, the family
and the villagers get shortchanged, while the soldiers themselves end up being
stuck someplace in the middle of nowhere.
Spending the majority of the time with Pedersen and his
unit, they have the feel of familiarity when all hell breaks loose, as the unit
comes under attack during a routine patrol, initiated by the deaths of an
entire family that was last seen talking to the patrol, setting a trap for
their ambush. With bullets and grenades
coming from all sides, Lasse is seriously shot, where they are able to pull him
back into the safety of their position while remaining pinned down behind a
wall unable to see the source of incoming fire.
Pedersen’s courage under fire is severely tested, as headquarters
refuses to send a medical helicopter until they can identify the location of
the enemy, while a young man’s life hinges in the balance. The intensity of the moment is ratcheted up
by increasingly claustrophobic, handheld cinematography by Magnus Nordenhof
Jønck, where the viewer is pulled directly into the heart of a frenzied battle
zone. With screaming profanity as the
only recognizable language in their chaotic predicament, life and death choices
have to be made under the worst conditions imaginable. With no musical cues or heart-thumping beats
of percussion, Pedersen orders air support to take out a building compound
where they believe the enemy is hidden.
In the aftermath, Lasse receives the necessary medical care and his men
get out alive. But shortly afterwards,
his unit receives an unexpected visit from military officers investigating
Pedersen’s conduct, where he’s immediately shipped home and charged with
killing eight civilians without proper military authorization. What has been a harrowing story out in the
field changes course completely, where instead we get a glimpse of the Danish
military court system which is systematically expressed in meticulous detail, instigating
a somber reflection and accountability for what seemed like a few crazed
moments of nerve-wracking combat. In
stark contrast to American films, which readily resort to exaggerated
stereotypical depictions of heroism, accentuating extended battle scenes, this
film only spends a few instantaneous moments in furious combat, then spends the
rest of the film sorting out the consequences.
Using a cool and detached style reminiscent of Jan Verheyen’s Belgian
courtroom drama The
Verdict (Het Vonnis) (2013), the court offers what amounts to a truth and
reconciliation committee on Europe’s involvement in foreign wars, where what
appears to be good intentions eventually becomes a humbling experience that
spells disaster. While Pedersen’s men
are present in the courtroom, much like the way police fill courtrooms
involving one of their own, it becomes an open-ended yet somewhat absurd
question for judges and prosecutors in Copenhagen to grasp the harrowing
conditions under which soldiers in Afghanistan operate, where one man can’t be
held accountable for the madness of war, yet the film was largely instigated by
just such an incident in 2012, Danish
officer faces trial over alleged killing of civilian, a case that probably
never went to trial. Instead this is
more likely a supposition, asking if preserving the lives of your own men in
combat is worth the calculated risk of killing civilians. Certainly your own men are appreciative and
can point to your actions for saving their lives, but those that were killed
have families as well, where their perspective often goes unheard. In this film, at least we consider the
far-reaching and long-term consequences, which is certainly a more
conscientious and healthy way to approach the subject.
