(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
The occupation of the coalition forces casts shadows over the cinema right now. The war in Iraq has created a cinematic need for health care that we have not seen since Vietnam.
The Vietnam War created a national trauma in the United States, which from the Apocalypse now, via Platoon to Full Metal Jacket was filmed by Hollywood. One of the striking features of the new wave of problematic war films is that the two most recent are from Britain. In that sense, it is possible to say that we are now facing an international trauma – and that it makes these relatively modest films as significant as Stanley Kubrick, Oliver Stone and Francis Ford Coppola's magnificent opus.
Judging by The Mark of Cain and Battle for Haditha, the war's impact on the soldiers' morale and humanity remains the focus when filmmakers tackle the West's gun-happy escapades. The differences, however, are more striking than the similarities. The analogy between the pursuit of the madman and uncontrollable General Kurtz and Marlow's journey in Joseph Conrad's book The Heart of Darkness is a well-known feature of Coppola's film. But while this may be said to reflect the connection between new and old imperialism, which is not least evident in the redux version, which includes a scene of cool colonial Frenchmen, the devastating psychological consequences of violence remain the decisive theme of the journey into the Cambodia jungle.
After Abu Ghraib, the political aspect of the effects of the war has also been at the center of the conscientious part of the film industry: How can the West demand democracy and human rights when the soldiers stand behind clear violations of the international law of war?
Iraq's Mai Lai?
The problem runs as an undercurrent in the American-American In the Valley of Elah as well, but gets an additional dimension in the two British films. Just think of the transatlantic disagreement around the Hague Court.
Battle for Haditha examines how the United States, the country the British follow through thick and thin, has been guilty of massacres and very reckless violence. The film is based on real events, and depicts the events that followed an attack with a roadside bomb on a US convoy in the western province of Anbar in November 2005. One of the soldiers dies in the attack, and the rest of the troop, led by Corporal Ramirez (Elliot Ruiz ), responds brutally by attacking and searching the nearby houses. The result is 24 dead – among them many civilians, as well as women and children.
The incident has been compared to the Mai Lai massacre, where up to 500 Vietnamese civilians were killed. Although a lopsided juxtaposition, director Broomfields shows in an unadorned and direct cinematic language how both soldiers and superiors in fear and anger create a carnage in Haditha.
The director has taken on the roles of ex-soldiers and Iraqi refugees in Jordan, without ever compromising performance. Rather, the fact that the actors improvise large parts of the dialogue based on their real experiences makes this one of the most realistic war films ever made.
Through its unorthodox method, Bloomfield also succeeds in humanizing both soldiers, civilians and rebels. Thus, Battle for Haditha becomes a strong testimony to the chaotic conditions of a war scene, and that the distinction between civilian and combatant is crucial, even under pressure and in an asymmetric war situation. Or perhaps more correctly: Especially then.
Grotesque trophy pictures
With The Mark of Cain, Mouth moves the camera lens from the British allies to the British army itself. We follow Shane Gulliver (Matthew McNulty), Mark Tate (Gerard Kearns) and their squad in Basra, just months after the spring 2003 invasion. Initially, the mission is to stabilize the security situation, but the soldiers are subject to an ambush, where a major and a few are killed.
Again, it is the reaction of the essential soldiers to the events, and not their possible heroism. They take a number of prisoners of war in a village where those responsible for the ambush attack are reportedly going to house. The prisoners are being abused at worst, something Mark will only reluctantly join. He and Shane return to England with neither honor nor fame, but with grotesque trophy images of the humiliating treatment the Iraqis were subjected to, as well as a frayed psyche. Mark is unable to handle the situation when investigations of the wrongdoing are initiated after the images are misaligned. However, so does Shane, who in court tells how superiors knew what was going on and even participated in torturing the prisoners.
While Battle for Haditha shows how the army is trying to hide the massacre, even in line with reality, The Mark of Cain weaves the illegitimate violence into a broader treatment of the position of the Geneva Convention in modern armies. Here too, the military hierarchy is not keen on a clean-up. But now it is linked to how the army functions as a social unit. Had Mark not joined in the wrongdoing, he would have stood outside the soldier community. And after returning home, he exercises his own inner justice by driving him crazy, while Shane gets a thorough spanking because he has "silenced". It is this tension between loyalty and one's own moral convictions that constitutes the dramaturgical engine of a film that masterfully combines psychology and politics.
jus in bello
In the ethics, the legitimacy of a war is determined by the reasons for going to war and by how the soldiers act during the war. The distinction between combatants and civilians is crucial in this respect. The same applies to the principle of proportional violence.
If anything Munden and Bloomfield's films show, it is precisely that "jus in bello", rules of war, is now at the center of the cultural processing of the West's violent attempts to defend democracy.
Speaking enough, no full-length feature film was ever made about the Mai Lai massacre in the wake of the Vietnam War. It is only now, 40 years and an Abu Ghraib later, that Oliver Stone is planning such a movie.
