Oscar-nominated A War presents subtle anti-war message — a film review
February 24, 2016
The Oscar-nominated film from Danish writer-director Tobias Lindhol, A War (Krigen) probably stands as the most subdued entry into the mix of foreign language films vying for the gold statuette this weekend. Split into two distinct settings, a small base of Danish soldiers in Afghanistan and a military tribunal back home in Denmark, the film follows a commanding officer on the field who must later face consequences of a rash decision during a firefight that ends in civilian deaths.
Everything about Claus (Pilou Asbæk) seems admirable though not necessarily sensible. He is invested in his men while also dedicated to what seems to be a pointless mission of patrolling the IED-filled desert near their base. After one of his soldiers dies, he reminds the survivors of their mission: It’s about winning over civilians and protecting them so they might rebuild. It’s not much of a speech or a mission. When one traumatized soldier refuses to go back outside of their short-walled base, Claus doesn’t hesitate to put his own safety on the line by leading the patrols himself. He also has a family back home, a wife (Tuva Novotny) and three young children who struggle with the mundane without their father at home.
As with his previous film, 2012’s A Hijacking, A War is intelligently edited to focus on characters and create barriers in their realities. There are long periods spent with Claus’ family or on the base. Lindhol never even bothers with inter-cutting phone calls between husband and wife, staying true to the setting he has put the viewer in and enhancing a sense of separation. Even at the opening, when we meet a platoon on patrol and Claus at base, the editing (expertly modulated by Adam Nielsen) is carefully paced to highlight the chaos and humanity of the front, while in the base the troops are remotely referred to by Claus with numbers. This is the first reveal of Claus’ frustration with having to stay in the base while leading troops on their patrol. Just as he used editing to highlight the behavior of corporate suits and a captain whose cargo ship has been hijacked by Somali pirates, Lindhol presents an incredible example of how key the film’s editing is to establishing its message and character development.
This continues into the fateful firefight that ultimately sends Claus home, the mystery of the location of the attackers only enhanced by Lindhol’s tendency to choose a perspective and stick with it. This style makes the struggle to reconcile the unknowable truth of what happened with the stories told through evidence and testimony feel genuine. The film is grounded by the unrelenting handheld camera work of Magnus Nordenhof Jønck. Even during the trial, the film has a feel for chaos normally reserved for characterizing the battlefield.
Asbæk’s leading performance is also outstanding. The viewer will understand Claus is still haunted by every event that has happened until the film’s final, revealing frame. Lindhol sparingly leans on close-ups and uses no flashbacks, much less any exposition, to reveal Claus’ thoughts or struggle with his conscience, to emphasize Claus struggle. Instead, it is in Asbæk’s low-key performance filled with slight ticks of hesitation and apprehension.
Ultimately, what Lindhol is trying to show is how the chaos of war is more to blame for the tearing apart of humanity than those wrapped up in it. He is careful not to characterize the Taliban as people as much by their cruel acts. Save for an encounter with a solitary member of the Taliban, the enemy comes across as an unseen boogeyman who strikes at night and leaves bloodied bodies of innocent children in its wake. As we can tell by the last half of the movie, the enemy is the military and a system that ineffectively polices itself. But with Lindhol’s concern for humanity above all, no one comes across as a bad guy, just people caught up in a machine run by an enemy as faceless as the vicious Taliban of A War.
A War is in Danish with English subtitles, runs 115 minutes and is rated R. It opens in Florida exclusively on Friday, Feb. 26, at the Coral Gables Art Cinema. It may be currently playing in your area outside of Florida or coming soon. For other play dates, visit this link. Magnolia Pictures provided all images in this post and a preview link for the purpose of this review.
Son of Saul, the feature debut by Hungarian director László Nemes has an audacious premise: placing the viewer in the shoes of a member of the Sonderkommando in Auschwitz-Birkenau. The film follows Saul Ausländer (Géza Röhrig) over the course of two days at the Nazi death camp. He is at the end of his tenure as a prisoner tasked with corralling fellow Jews into mass gas chambers and disposing of the evidence as quickly as possible before he and other members of the Sonderkommando guide the next batch of frightened prisoners with promises of “After the shower, you will have some tea.”
The film’s opening shot is a stunning moment of establishing thesis and aesthetic. After the film’s stark opening title card explains the role of the Sonderkommando at Auschwitz, the audience will notice the idyllic chirping of birds. The viewer is confronted with a blurry shot of a lush wooded area in a tight, boxy 1.33:1 aspect ratio. There appears to be two young people (possibly children) crouched by a tree apparently digging in the dirt. A blurry figure approaches the center of the screen until his ragged, pale face with a cracked lip comes into focus, the mystery of everything else around him still blurred out. It is the jittery Saul, remarkably portrayed by non-actor and poet Röhrig.
It’s a crafty shot that reveals the film’s shallow focus and how nothing will appear as clearly as it might seem, as the film stays sharply focused on the man whose face you now clearly see. The cinematography by Mátyás Erdély, who worked in similar close up but to very different effect in James 
White (James White uses meticulous performances and precise camerawork to make damaged person sympathetic and real — a film review), creates an incredibly subjective experience. It’s not so much a first person perspective as it is presenting an out-of-body experience for the film’s main character. Saul goes about his job with meticulous, hasty precision, reassuring the victims, then cleaning out their hung clothes of valuables for the Nazis to collect and catalog before entering the chambers to help drag out the nude, lifeless corpses and stack them up for mass incineration.
Though details are often blurred out in his periphery, that doesn’t make them any less real. It’s a cinematic choice by Nemes to capture the sense that Saul is tuning out his environment to come to grips with his complicity, a role that bides him a little more time to live before he too is executed. Obscuring the atrocities only heightens the horror. It’s a respectful representation of the incomprehensible. Nemes never heightens the film beyond this. There are hardly any noticeable cuts in the flow of the action, which features long takes. There is also no music score. The soundtrack is industrial horror show from the rhythmic puffing of the train the victims ride in on, to the screams and metallic scratching on the walls as they are gassed. Even the plentiful gunshots from the SS troops become almost rhythmically routine in the film’s diegetic din.
Beyond the sensory experience of Son of Saul, Nemes’ script, co-written with historian Clara Royer explores a complex dynamic of what happens over the course of the film. Saul latches onto a boy who is pulled from the chamber still breathing but is suffocated to death by a camp doctor. Saul seems to think this boy is his son, and he becomes bent on finding a rabbi among the prisoners to say Kaddish and give the child a proper burial. Meanwhile, a revolt is being planned around him. In another layer of complexity, it helps to understand that among the Sonderkommando, there are Polish and Hungarian Jews who hold an animosity toward each other, revealing the profound sense of divisiveness in humanity. Even under the same belief system there are tribal allegiances, and even as their captors and killers push them around, the internal hate among victims persists, enhancing the film’s Inferno-like quality.
As an effort to capture the horrors of Auschwitz, Son of Saul is incredible in how it harnesses the tools of cinema. From decisions in framing and focus to soundtrack and storytelling, Son of Saul is a remarkable achievement, and the film has indeed been duly recognized. It came out of Cannes last year with the Grand Prix and charged ahead to its current nomination for the Best Foreign Language Film prize at the upcoming Oscars, where most expect it to win. Holocaust films always matter, and Son of Saul is an indisputable effort in not just technical filmmaking but in channeling cinema’s power to capture subjective perspective. However, respect belongs to history. No matter the level of gruesome imagery, Holocaust cinema is mere representation. You will come out shaken but with the knowledge you are alive. Son of Saul is a life experience and a confrontation worth submitting to if only to remind yourself of the horror sentience is capable of inspiring in man, and Nemes should be commended for that.
- Tower Theater
- Cinema Paradiso Fort Lauderdale
- Living Room Theaters
- Carmike Muvico Parisian
- Movies Delray
- Movies of Lake Worth
For other theaters in the U.S., visit this link. All images are courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics who also provided a DVD screener for the purpose of this review.
Filmmakers Charlie Kaufman, Duke Johnson on meanings of Anomalisa and awards season ghetto of animation — An IndieEthos Exclusive
January 14, 2016
On an uncharacteristically wet and chilly Tuesday morning in Downtown Miami, filmmakers Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson sit at a round table easily large enough to sit 10 in a windowless conference room of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. Though it may not seem ideal, the gloom reflects the atmosphere of the duo’s debut collaboration, Anomalisa. “It’s like winter on the beach,” acknowledges Johnson. “I love that.”
The stop-motion film opens on a rainy night in Cincinnati, so it’s fitting Johnson eases into the atmosphere of the day. The film’s story, written by Kaufman, follows Michael Stone (voiced by David Thewlis) a customer service expert with a best-selling book entitled “How May I Help You Help Them?” He’s staying at a hotel before a speaking engagement for a group of customer service reps. It’s there that he bumps into Lisa (voiced by Jennifer Jason Leigh). Unlike everyone else around him, who sound like Tom Noonan and have similar faces (from women to men to children), Lisa is different. She’s an anomaly in Michael’s mundane world. She even has a scar on her face that she hides behind her long bangs.
“Let’s talk about that movie,” says Kaufman, changing the subject from the weather before quickly adding, “I’m tired about talking about that movie,” with a laugh. They are now on the fourth month of the film’s press tour.
Kaufman, 57, is the screenwriter of Being John Malkovich (1999) and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004). He wrote Anomalisa as radio play, which was first performed on stage by Thewlis, Leigh and and Noonan in 2005. Looking for something more adult for the stop motion repertoire of the animation studio he co-owns, Starburns Industries, producer Dino Stamatopoulos, brought the script to Johnson. As a self-described longtime fan of Kaufman’s work, the 36-year-old animation director took almost immediate interest in the work. “I loved it. I just related to the characters and was moved by it emotionally,” he admits.
Thus, Starburns approached Kaufman to adapt Anomalisa with puppets in mind. Though it wasn’t his first choice for turning his radio play into something visual, Kaufman confesses, he had few choices to get back into filmmaking. “I was looking to get stuff made,” he says. “I was having a difficult time getting anything off the ground, so I gave them permission to try to raise money, and they were able to, so we did it.”
Kaufman says it was only after the film-making process began that the significance of telling the story via the stop motion medium registered. 
“Once we started working on it in stop motion I think Duke and I discovered why stop motion works for the film. And certainly after people started seeing the movie, I think we discovered even more in terms of reactions from people.”
Before anyone reads too much into what it may mean that the story is told via stop motion, Kaufman clarifies, “It wasn’t about the stop motion that I was reacting. It was about the visual form. I think live action would have had the same reaction.”
Kaufman has long had an aversion to explaining what his films are about. Some mistakenly consider this pretense. What Kaufman really is is a generous filmmaker, inviting the audience to project their own experiences and identities when experiencing one of his movies. He says of Anomalisa, “People are to get from it what they bring to it, how they interact with it, what it inspires in their minds based on their experience of the world. I’m not going to tell people what they should get from it. I was writing about this character who struggles with this particular problem. We’ve had an enormous diversity of reactions, and it’s not even about I love it or hate it, even though that’s part of it for some people … For me to say what it’s about would sort of preclude the possibility of people having that experience, so I’m not going to.”
As with any film that invites interpretation, some will see things they would not ordinarily like to see. At a recent preview screening in Miami, it was reported that a group of entertainment reporters could hardly contain their giggles when Michael and Lisa had graphic, awkward sex. Heads smacked painfully on a headboard and cunnilingus was enacted. On a more surreal extreme, the film breaks the fourth wall when Michael literally comes apart at the seams. Not everyone has liked this movie, as Kaufman noted, but that is to be expected. However, this does not make this film a “bad” movie.
Johnson offers, “There’s a difference between people being repelled by an idea or being offended by something to having a negative feeling about something or thinking that it’s poor filmmaking. Those are two different things. For me, Lars Von Trier, I think, he’s really talented, an incredible filmmaker. I have the utmost respect and admiration for what he does. Sometimes I don’t feel like going to see one of his movies. I’m not always ready for it. It’s not always an enjoyable, emotional experience for me, and it’s hard. His movies always challenge me in a way that I just sometimes don’t want to have that experience. But I would never say that one of his movies is bad, because I think that’s two different things.”
“Yeah,” chimes in Kaufman. “I think a movie is bad when it leaves you with nothing or when you feel that you’ve been manipulated by it to get a reaction that isn’t a real reaction from you, which I think is a common thing. What I think our film does that a lot of films don’t do is that it doesn’t conclude anything, which I try never to do when I write things. It doesn’t say: And so we’ve learned that it’s bad to be this or that it’s good to be this or that it’s important to love people. You can find things like that in it because things like that are there, but there’s hopefully — and by intention — there’s a layering of ideas in the movie.”
But there is something special and inherent in the film’s stop motion. The characters’ movements are never perfectly smooth, and you will notice the seams in the face 
plates that have to be changed out for different mouth movements or expressions. This is by design, and though the film was meticulously made, there are still glitches here and there, which is fine by the filmmakers. “For me personally,” says Johnson, “I think everything could have been done better as you’re going. For me, it’s my process, striving for some sort of perfection that can never be reached, and then, in the end, it’s so much better because of the flaws, that you weren’t able to reach that perfection. But you still have to go for something to find what it ends up being.”
On an almost subconscious level, these flaws only enhance the film’s human concern and all of its blemishes. Kaufman says, “The flaws are what make it, as far as I’m concerned. I don’t feel it could be better. I mean, obviously, in some objective sense it could, but I feel like I love the way this movie looks.”
The film has received some tremendous acclaim. At press time, it was nominated for an Oscar in the Animated Feature Film category. Prior to that it was nominated for a Golden Globe. Although it was relegated to the animation section to compete only against children’s movies. Says Kaufman, “The thing about the Golden Globes that’s interesting and frustrating to me is — in addition to the fact that the category as it’s perceived in the United States — is that it’s movies for children, and ours is not. In fact, Kurt Russell, in his introduction to animation at the Golden Globes said these are movies all generations can enjoy together, or something like that. Well, at that point I knew we weren’t gonna win.” He laughs.
Kaufman says he hopes that someday people can see beyond animation to consider it in other categories at such awards ceremonies. “Maybe in 2020,” he says. “Animation is like any other filmmaking. It’s a thing and you can make anything you want with it. But it’s been relegated to this sort of children’s movie thing, and it’s frustrating. We’re hoping — we were hoping, and we continue to hope that people start seeing it as a diverse form and not just that one thing.”
“I mean, it’s a movie,” offers Johnson. “It’s just a movie, and above everything else it’s just a movie about this story and…”
“And the thing about stop motion animation,” Kaufman interrupts, “which is like even closer to live action is that it’s actual, three-dimensional filmmaking. It’s not the illusion of light that’s created in the computer or created in drawings. There are sets, and there are actors, and there are costumes, and things move through space, and it’s filmmaking, just very incremental in how it’s done.”
“There’s this thing about the Oscars and the Golden Globes and where does this fit?” continues Johnson. “It’s relegated to the kids table.”
Johnson has worked on many stop motion projects through Starburns, including “Morel Orel” and “Mary Shelley’s Frankenhole” on Adult Swim, as well as having directed the famous Christmas episode for “Community.” He
has some experience as a stop motion animator against different animation styles. He notes that cinematography is a key aspect of the medium. However, the animation guild, the Association Internationale du Film d’Animation (ASIFA), does not have a cinematography category in their awards, the Annie Awards, which is now entering its 43rd year. “This is for animation, but they have don’t have cinematography because animation doesn’t typically have a cinematographer.”
Kaufman adds, “And what Joe Passarelli, our DP did, is incredibly gorgeous and incredibly intricate, and it’s also something that is often not done in this type of animation because it makes it difficult to animate, to have really complex lighting grids, and it limits access to the animators. We have these tiny little grids, and it’s eye lights, and it’s beautiful. It took forever for them to set up.”
Though delicate in its temperament in depicting a man lost within himself, Anomalisa is truly a confrontation on many levels. It’s a confrontation to the limits of the animation genre, and it’s a confrontation of the studio system, which makes it amazing that a major studio (Paramount Pictures) has taken a chance on this movie. It’s truly a film better suited for art houses, as it’s also a confrontation to human existence, feelings and how we value others outside of us. “I’ll take that,” says Kaufman, “but I don’t feel confrontational, honestly don’t, in making this thing. I don’t feel that it’s confrontation, and I’m not saying that it isn’t. I’m just saying that that is something that I will say: For me it was an exploration of an idea and a way of interacting that I experienced and that I see and that I feel is commonplace, but I don’t feel like it’s a lecture.”
He says you have to keep in mind that there’s no omniscient perspective in the film to judge this character by. It’s an internal experience. There is no room for dramatic irony or anything with that kind of cynicism. “I wrote this from the point of view of Michael’s character,” offers Kaufman. “It’s completely inside his experience, except for the end of the movie … This is Michael’s experience, and I feel like it’s a human experience.”
Anomalisa runs 90 minutes and is Rated R. It opens in our Miami area at Regal South Beach this Friday. It has been slowly rolling out across the U.S. since Dec. 30. For dates in other cities, visit this link. Paramount Pictures provided all images used in this post and invited me to a screening last month for awards consideration.
Independent Ethos 