For tonight's movie, I went back to Denmark, after being very impressed by my first cinematic "visit" there, in which I watched "Land Of Mine", reviewed a few nights ago. "A War" (2015) came to my attention once again from an IMDB recommendation related to "Land Of Mine", so I ordered it from the ever trusty Libe and they delivered it post haste. It was written and directed by a guy named Tobias Lindholm, and if this film is any indication, he is a filmmaker to watch, and in fact I have ordered two more of his movies from the endless library supply.
"A War" is the story of a company of Danish soldiers in Afghanistan. This was another thing new to me about Denmark - just as I was unaware of a Danish film industry, I also did not know that the Danes were involved in the ongoing war. I know there are NATO troops there in addition to those from the U.S., but for whatever reason I would not have imagined a military presence from Denmark.
As the movie begins, however, and you watch the soldiers on patrol in the wide open Afghan countryside, you don't see a lot of difference between the Danish soldiers and our own American troops. The Danes are outfitted in the same high-tech gear. They are big and macho. They are well-trained and ultra-disciplined. Perhaps in this day and age, all of the countries of the Western allied world train and supply their soldiers by the same set of standards. These guys could be soldiers from any highly-equipped modern Army, but in this case they happen to be from Denmark, a country I was unaware of having involvement in Afghanistan.
As the story begins, a platoon is patrolling an area of remote desert compounds, walled-off sectors where poor families live, beholden to the Taliban who have overtaken their meager lives. They welcome the Danes, but every encounter between soldiers and villagers is chaotic, due to mistrust and language barriers. The soldiers also are well aware that the Taliban use children to deliver bombs, among other cowardly tactics. Therefore no one is fully trusted. It's a bad situation any way you look at it, and in the movie, you can feel the tension building with each patrol.
The story is intercut with scenes back home in Denmark. These scenes show the day to day lives of the platoon leader's family, his wife and small children who wait for his sporadic phone calls while trying to maintain a semblance of domestic normalcy.
At first, when the Denmark family scenes appear, you wonder where the director is going with this angle, because in making this switch, he has suddenly removed you from the gripping tension of the war and placed you in a suburban elementary school, or at the breakfast table with the soldier's wife and kids. For the first hour you are moved back and forth between these two worlds, and then....
...during a battle situation inside the Danish military encampment, a situation arises that changes the course of the movie.
And that is all I will tell you. I probably should not have told this much, but I wanted to at least present the setup.
"A War" is presented as realism, in a straightforward manner. The desert patrols look and feel just like you would imagine them to feel if you were there. The acting is realistic down to the military jargon and the way the men carry themselves. But even more important to the film's effectiveness, I think, is the superb pacing and direction by Tobias Lindholm. He has all the technical ability of the young directors of the current age, but he also has the skill of rhythm and pace. Editing is more than just maintaining continuity, or even cutting scenes so that they fit perfectly into one another.
To create a "gripping" effect, in which viewers are held rapt, a filmmaker must also present a finished product that you cannot look away from, from start to finish.
And to do that, he or she must pay close attention to the pacing and mood between scenes.
An undercurrent must be created, no matter the type of film. And such an undercurrent - one that Pulls The Viewer Into The Film - cannot be created by editing technique alone.
There must also be a feel for mood and rhythm.
Tobias Lindholm, the director of "A War", has this ability. He reminds me of the Dardenne brothers from Belgium in this respect, of creating interesting motion picture stories that are presented as real, but also keep the viewer highly involved through tried and true editing techniques of tension building, and creating a mood and a rhythm.
That's all I have to say about the movie, which I highly recommend.
I am super tired, workin' all the time. Not many hikes these days, but I hope to get out there soon.
Elizabeth, I hope all is well with you. I am thinking about you as always. :):)
R.I.P. to Fast Eddie Clarke, as posted on my FB page this morn. Man, I can remember when I first heard "Ace Of Spades" in 1980. I had never heard of Motorhead before that album was released, but it was a life changer. I even carved "Motorhead" in big letters, into the gutter outside the Rathburn Street house, when a city street crew poured new concrete that year. The last time I checked, "Motorhead" was still visible, almost 40 years later. The time spans blow my mind.
It is important to note that Motorhead was a band. It was not just Lemmy, who the press made into an Icon late in his life, because they suddenly decided he was hip enough to establish.
By that time, Motorhead was a shadow of it's former self, forging on with replacement members for fifteen or twenty years, and not a memorable album created.
No, I must say because I was there at the beginning, or close to the beginning. Motorhead was a band of three guys, each great in his own way. Lemmy was without doubt the leader, and perhaps the main songwriter, I don't know. And we all love him, and of course he was a rock n' roll original.
But without Eddie Clarke and Phil Taylor, there never would have been a Motorhead.
That's how important those two guys were, and how great.
All you have to do, to see how great they were, is to listen to the album "Ace Of Spades".
Listen to it all the way through, and you will feel how I felt when I first heard it 37 years ago, and you will know why I carved "Motorhead" into the freshly poured concrete in the gutter outside my house.
See you in the morning. :):)
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