Anti-war film

Characteristics

Anti-war films typically argue that war is futile, unjust, a loss for all involved, only serves to benefit few in society (usually an elite or ruling class, or the state), makes people do or support things they normally would not (such as homicide or discrimination), is extremely costly both in money and lives, or is otherwise undesirable for those fighting it, the target audience, or everyone in general. To illustrate their point, anti-war films often present the effects of war—such as destruction, suffering, war trauma, casualties, war crimes, war's impact on the environment or on children, or the excesses of war—in a negative manner. Though many anti-war films make this negative depiction explicit and clear for the audience to understand, some are more subtle in delivering their anti-war messaging (such as making the ostensibly good side as brutal as their enemies), or may use parody and black comedy to satirize wars and conflicts.

While most anti-war films use real historical or then-ongoing conflicts—commonly modern wars in recent memory that the intended audience is familiar with or understands, such as World War I, World War II, the Vietnam War, or the war on terror—as their settings to criticize those wars, their casus belli, or their effects, others use hypothetical conflicts (e.g. World War III), fictional wars involving fictional countries, or even a conflict in a fictional universe, an alternate history, or the far future. Some anti-war films may not depict front line or battlefield conflict at all, and instead present anti-war messaging through depictions of the rear, military hierarchy, military operations other than war, military misconduct or corruption, the military–industrial complex, refugees and survivors, or the aftermath of wars, ranging from the immediate post-war recovery to the post-apocalypse.

Within this category of anti-war films that choose to de-emphasize the actual battlefield conflicts of war, some films specifically focus on communicating pacifist ideologies by emphasizing war's devastating effects on innocent civilians and the lands in which war is waged. This niche of anti-war films often utilizes visceral imagery that confronts viewers with the tragic realities of war's presence in beloved main characters' lives, such as by depicting main characters' homes being decimated by war bombs, main characters being forced to contend with the uncomfortable, off-putting presence of soldiers in their city, and characters dealing with the emotional toll of witnessing war's violence in their own life or the lives of their loved ones. According to film researcher Lindsay Smith, by forcing viewers to see war through the lens of its devastation on beloved fictional characters, these anti-war films make it accessible for audiences--regardless of their knowledge or experience with war's effects in the real world--to empathize with war's victims since emphasizing the human costs of war can make its violence feel more real and personal.

Anti-war films have sometimes been accused of anti-Americanism by the American right wing. These accusations can be somewhat attributed to the fact that there are definitive examples of modern anti-war films that are specifically motivated by criticisms of American militarism in particular rather than the violence of war as a whole. One such prominent example is Howl's Moving Castle, a Japanese anti-war film made by pacifist Hayao Miyazaki as a direct criticism of the Iraq War, which was a war waged by US-led forces in Iraq as part of America's ongoing War on Terror in response to 9/11. Miyazaki declared that he expected and intended for Howl's Moving Castle to fail with American audiences due to its direct critique of America's military actions in Iraq, thus framing the film as seemingly un-American in its anti-war commentary.

Criticism

Several filmmakers and critics have been quoted as stating that "there is no such thing as an anti-war film", first attributed to François Truffaut. This school of criticism argues that cinema is inherently "an inadequate medium through which to convey the horrors of conflict" and that any such portrayal of combat and violence will always glorify warfare on some level, even if only through the death of the author. Supposedly failed anti-war films in this regard include Full Metal Jacket and Saving Private Ryan; The former was decried as "another goddamn recruiting film" by Samuel Fuller, while the latter was criticized by Toby Miller as legitimizing the United States as the military savior of the world.

List of anti-war films

The following is a list of anti-war films.

References

References

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