Film Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning
On the making of making war
Gave myself the whole day off I still got to this late, despite/because of the usual hour or two of rabbit-hole tracking I give to Civil War every day. Yesterday, I scoured the Instagrams of the cast and crew, whose accounts of making the film are uniformly enthusiastic.
I was about to point to the contrast between the movie’s sobering message and the giddiness of some of the posts — maybe call it “an unsettling juxtaposition” or “eerie divergence.” But isn’t that part of the movie, too? There’s pleasure in war, especially (only?) if you’re mostly a bystander.
Ex-SEAL Ray Mendoza was the movie’s military advisor. He’s given several interviews about the process [WSJ, Task & Purpose, Military.com], and they lack the “wooooo, we did it” quality of the crews’ Insta posts. As a veteran, perhaps he can appreciate the parallels between moviemaking and battle — and he’s proud of the work — but he doesn’t get any contact high from a production that only has fake blood.
For people in the military [filming] kind of the same process or same flow. If you’re going on an operation, how are you going in? Are you using tanks, are you using Bradleys, are you using helos? You’ve got to go liaison with that squadron. Who’s going to be your quick reaction force? At SEAL teams we don’t have quick reactions, so I’ll have to go to whatever brigade or battalion I’m attached to and ask what’s your response time? What do you need from us? It’s very much the same flow or process, working with multiple people getting an idea out there, communicating it clear and concisely as possible to get everyone in the process to achieve one objective. It’s why I feel I can navigate through this stuff very easily. I try to do a one for one. It’s similar to trying to get air support. [T&P]
The best testimony to the caliber of Mendoza’s execution1 is that he’ll be co-directing and co-writing Alex Garland’s next movie. Their next movie. Garland has said that this film (working title: “Warfare”) doesn’t count as violating his self-imposed hiatus from directing because it “is, in a very profound way, Ray’s story.”
On my part, it’s an act of transcription and organization rather than what I would normally think of as screenwriting. That will also be true with the directing. Actually, in a way, the writing of the script is an echo of the way I suspect the film will get made. [Vulture]
I read somewhere2 the movie will be about the event for which Mendoza won the Silver Star.3 You can read the official citation for the medal here. TLDR: He pulled multiple injured SEALS out of an ambush “under heavy enemy fire,” “rendered life-saving medical care,” and then “carried the wounded SEAL through withering enemy fire to the safety of the extract vehicle.”
I can tell you that Mendoza’s experience helped create a visceral, enthralling movie. But since I have no idea what battle really looks like, I can’t judge the choices Mendoza (and Garland) made in translating reality into movie language. To be clear: I’m not interested in the strict question, “Is the portrayal of warfare in this movie accurate?”
I’m interested in where the realism that Mendoza clearly brought to the movie works in service of the story and where Mendoza and Garland deviated from reality in order to make a point… or, in one instance Mendoza has cited, made a scene more realistic in a way that obscures a definitive reading (which might be the point):
The Hawaiian shirt scene was definitely different from the D.C. scene. We looked at the characters and asked “are the prior military or just gun enthusiasts?” Initially it was just “they’re normal people that picked up guns.” Then when we saw the movement we wanted…well it’s up to the viewer. If I was to watch it as a viewer I’d say they have some kind of training based on how they move, based on the C-grip they have on their rifle.
So people with firearm experience in their background will know something about the combatants that others don’t and can’t be expected to know. Obviously, this influences how they interpret the allegiance of the Hawaiian shirts and the meaning of the battle. Certainly, the idea that the Hawaiian shirt dudes are not just dudes changes how I thought I felt about the scene in which a Hawaiian shirt executes their POWs (dressed in traditional fatigues) as he screams in ecstasy. He’s not some Lawn Guy who picked up a gun to play soldier and found he liked it; nor is he a dad whose passions are unbound by knowledge of the laws of war… though he may be a dad whose passions overwhelm his knowledge of the laws of war.
Or none of that, because Garland wanted the actors to move in the way that worked cinematically, and Mendoza had them hold their rifles in a C-grip versus a vertical or magwell grip because that looked cool, too.
All you wanted to know about gripping an AR can be found here. The dorkier the grip, the more control you have. How uncool is a vertical grip? It’s what I’m using in the pic below.
I was going to relegate this next point to a footnote but it’s a layer cake of irony delicious enough to serve up top: The C-grip’s cool look has made it a topic of debate in gun forums where some shooters dismiss it as nothing but “tacticool” posing. So there’s a subset of non-veteran Very Online Gun Guys who would read the Hawaiian shirt soldiers as obvious hobbyists.
Or, that’s what they would think if that’s the audience that finds this movie. They are probably the people I want the most to see it. But who knows what they’d take away.
Thank you for your patience and your endurance. More to come.
Sorry.
Can’t find it in my history, really have to start bookmarking this stuff.
I know for sure Mendoza is a character and will be played by D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai.