Is there anything more slippery than memory? It’s an idea, a scene, a moment, a feel, a smell, a moment in time logged in your brain. Over time the memory will fade, the specifics get fuzzy and some of the details start to shift. That’s the nature of the ephemeral. One of the gifts of memories over time is that the emotions they conjure up grow stronger. But the nature of memory trends toward the insular over time. Have you ever told a long time friend about something that’s been in your head for years, only for your friend to have a different recounting or, worse, no recollection at all? That’s where I find myself a couple days after seeing Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza’s Warfare, a movie with the tagline “everything is based on memory” and made specifically for an audience of one.
Mendoza served as the military supervisor on Garland’s last film, Civil War. They continue their collaboration here, with Mendoza (played here by D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai) levelling up to co-writer and co-director.
The audience of one is Elliott, played in the movie by Cosmo Jarvis. The memories the film is based on come from Mendoza and other Navy SEALs they served alongside. Importantly, Elliott did not contribute any memories because he was severely injured during a mission and has no memories of what happened during the events depicted in the film. On November 19th, 2006, their unit was carrying out a mission. Things go sideways when the SEALs attempt to flee the house they’ve taken over (with the Iraqi family held captive in a bedroom), only for an IED to go off and force the unit, bloodied and shell-shocked, back into the house where they try to coordinate their rescue while under fire from insurgents.
Warfare is an undeniable white-knuckle experience. The film unfolds more or less in real time and it’s a technical marvel. The sound design is immersive and devastating. There is no score on the film, so every silence, staticky radio transmission, scream, shout, gunshot, explosion, and fly-by is heightened. The person sitting next to me was jumping, flinching, and rocking in their seat throughout the film. It’s visceral, to say the least, and as physically exhausting as a viewing experience can be.
The casting, as is typical of big-budget war pictures, is loaded with the hottest young actors around. In addition to Jarvis and Woon-A-Tai, Will Poulter, Joseph Quinn, Henry Melton, Noah Centineo, Kitt Connor, and Michael Gandolfini, among others. The real-time approach doesn’t allow for any character arcs, nor does Mendoza and Garland’s quest for fidelity to the actual events.
For all its technical prowess, however, the result is a film that feels emotionally cold. It’s paradoxical, what with everything about its conception and creation being extremely personal. As an act of grace for a friend and fellow soldier, Mendoza’s empathy is evident. It’s also stated explicitly onscreen and emphasized with end-credit footage of the real Elliott on the film’s set. Without spelling its thesis out,Warfare plays like a mission-gone-wrong story. Civil War caught flack from a section of critics and viewers for a perceived apolitical-ness, fueled by interviews with Garland where repeatedly tried to stake out the middle ground. Warfare feels like a double-down on that front. A story like this can’t truly be apolitical, despite its creators’ intentions. Warfare has a tunnel-vision focus that will surely garner criticism. Rightfully so, I think. The sincerity of Mendoza telling this story for the sake of his friend clashes with the reality of studio filmmaking, especially for a story set during the invasion of Iraq. I left the theater after the Warfare screening being simultaneously impressed and queasy. As my friend who saw the movie with me put it, there’s a sense that we watched something we weren’t meant to see.
