After the release of the divisive Civil War last year, director Alex Garland returns to the big screen with an equally alienating depiction of war. Head of Reviews Robert Flynn discusses Garland’s dedication to realism in representing the memories of Ray Mendoza and his platoon
In an unexpected turn of events, Alex Garland has become one of the most divisive directors of his generation. While the poorly handled Men (2022) caused many to sour on the once widely appreciated director, it wasn't until last year’s Civil War (2024) that Garland would truly divide audiences into two equally passionate camps. To some, Civil War was an empty, confusingly apolitical film that showed America wrapt up in a never ending internecine war. Though such a premise would seem ripe for contemporary political commentary, Garland didn't seem to be too pushed to offer his two cents on the matter. Instead he offered a hermetic view of war through the lens of several photojournalists who had become jaded and numbed by their profession.
It still remains an odd and visceral experience and for those who found merit in Garland’s film, it was an intriguing take on a collective alienation and numbness toward war, many of the Americans in Garland’s Civil War still maintaining that no war was taking place. His followup, Warfare (2025), is no different, taking an even more alienated and ambiguous approach to an utterly devastating day in the life of an American platoon during the battle of Ramadi in Iraq. With the co-direction of Ray Mendoza, a veteran who was part of the platoon depicted in the film, Garland has crafted a disturbingly real and tense vision of war that feels pointedly nebulous.
Cloaked in darkness and led by Captain Erik (Will Poulter), a platoon of Navy SEALs seize two houses in Ramadi, both houses stacked on top of one another and occupied by two civilian families. After punching a hole through the forward facing wall of the upper floor, hyper-attentive sniper Elliot (Cosmo Jarvis) begins surveillance over the active town. The actual context of the mission remains underdiscussed, the boyish platoon often appear more interested in trying to make one another crack up, spitting into each other's water, or quietly admonishing the timid “new guy” Tommy (Kit Connor) for trying to subtly fit into the platoon. The perspective of the Iraqi families remains under-represented, apart from pointed close-ups that seem to underline their lack of agency over the situation, their role in the film being somewhat consciously underwritten.
What concerns Mendoza and Garland is the psychology of each member of the platoon which is felt to great effect by the film's masterful and hypnotic use of sound design.
Garland pays attention to the banalities of the surveillance mission, limiting the scope of the film to the two Navy-occupied houses. As the events of the film gradually unfold, an unbearable tension is built, the audience becoming increasingly aware that the seemingly innocuous atmosphere can be broken at any moment. As Garland commits to representing the memories of the SEALs with an upsetting degree of gory verisimilitude instead of conveying the actual stakes or purpose of the mission, one thing becomes clear: what is taking place is disturbingly futile.
What concerns Mendoza and Garland is the psychology of each member of the platoon which is felt to great effect by the film's masterful and hypnotic use of sound design. The use of silence throughout most of the film's first half hour eases the audience into the rhythms of the platoon, the sounds of the communicators, the convoluted Navy lingo. As the events become out of hand, sounds become distorted or are completely omitted, leaving only their visual elements: what Warfare realises is that what is not heard clearly, or even at all, is often the most effective choice. It is a feat of sound design in how it is used in tandem with the pacing of the film, completely arresting the audience in how it builds and layers previously established sounds but then suddenly breaking the pattern, giving auditory cues as to when the audience can loosen up and take a breath.
Warfare shows Garland using his gory horror sensibilities and melding them with a Michael Mann-esque dedication to verisimilitude, representing the memories of Mendoza and his platoon in the most viscerally real way possible. What results is a truly uncompromised and relentless depiction of an isolated incident during the Iraq War, one that places the importance of the lives of the characters above all else. The films of Kathryn Bigelow came to mind during several moments of the film, specifically Zero Dark Thirty (2012) and The Hurt Locker (2009). Both Garland and Bigelow’s films never force a take on America’s presence in Iraq or Afghanistan. Instead, they commit to showing the events that took place in their purest form, allowing the audience to decide how they feel.