Ashes and Diamonds (Popiól i diament, Poland, 1958)

 Jonathan Rosenbaum makes the point that while this film is about the forties, it’s set on the day of the Nazi surrender, it’s overlayed by a fifties’ sensibility. This is evident through the James Dean-like Zbigniew Cybulski (though Rosenbaum cites Brando) but also in the European Art cinema style in which its shot. The ‘heavy’ [...]

In Our Name (UK, 2010)

There’s a Hollywood tradition of the ‘returning vet’ film (a testament to the number of wars America gets into) and these are often, understandably, noir in nature. This British contribution eschews expressionist visual style in favour of handheld realism and a clear social milieux in the North East of England. Add the fact that the [...]

Apocalypse Now (US, 1979)

Having watched a number of ‘classic’ films over the last few years and finding them wanting (not sure whether it’s the film or me that’s ‘dated’, maybe both) it was something of a relief to be ‘blown away’ by Apocalypse Now again. What struck me most was the fact that what we were seeing was [...]

Dead Presidents (US, 1995)

The Hughes brothers have only made two features since this sophomore effort 15 years ago. Their first two films offered a political dimension to conventional narratives – maybe that’s why they’ve made so few films – and this film has an interesting visual style. This first half is a sensitively portrayed ‘coming of age’ film [...]

Lebanon (Israel-France-Germany, 2009)

It’s a big challenge to set the whole of a film inside a tank but when you’re trying to convey what it was like invading Lebanon, in 1982, in an Israeli tank then it’s a good starting point. Writer-director, Samuel Moaz, makes the constraint a strength through the humanity of his (autobiographical, at least, to [...]

Representing the war in Iraq

NB This is extracted from Image and Representation (Palgrave, 2nd edition, 2009), pp.268-71 and includes spoilers Unlike during the Vietnam War, when Hollywood barely noted the war’s existence in its films, the conflict in Iraq, which started with the (primarily) American-British invasion in 2003, saw many films released on the subject. Most of these films [...]

The Hurt Locker (US, 2008)

As the critical response has suggested, this is an impressive war film about Iraq. Stylistically similar to the hyper-real visual style seen in Cloverfield (US, 2008), it uses extreme handheld shake to signify ‘thereness’. If you’re filming defusing an unexploded bomb the niceties of framing and composition are going out of the window. The cinematographer [...]

Defiance (US, 2008)

This is little-known World War II territory, a true story of Jewish resistance, in what’s now Belarus. And although its leads are obviously recognisable, the tone of the first part of the film is muted using mostly blue filters (or is the look added post-production?) to give a suitably gloomy vision. Also the heroes act [...]

A Walk in the Sun (US, 1945)

This is an extremely wordy war film which concentrates as much on the psychological battles as it does on the capture of a farmhouse six miles inland from the Italian coast. Dialogue and interior monologues are privileged over action as the platoon fights it way through one morning. Doesn’t sound very Hollywood and, although it [...]

Jarhead (US, 2005)

Subject of a typically confused Sight and Sound review: it’s different and too conventional. As a genre movie it’s bound to use conventions and it’s the differences that are interesting (like no one gets to shoot anybody – it’s Gulf War 1). Some extremely effective set pieces: the hell of the road out of Basra [...]