{"id":2169,"date":"2018-11-11T12:00:31","date_gmt":"2018-11-11T17:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/?p=2169"},"modified":"2018-11-11T12:00:31","modified_gmt":"2018-11-11T17:00:31","slug":"whats-the-point-of-a-war-film-war-requiem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/2018\/11\/11\/whats-the-point-of-a-war-film-war-requiem\/","title":{"rendered":"What’s the Point of a War Film: War Requiem"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\tWe\u2019re ending our series on WWI films with War Requiem. <\/em>I\u2019d never seen this movie before I watched it for this blog post, but I chose it for this series because it seemed nontraditional. Little did I know. This film was probably the weirdest movie I\u2019ve ever seen. Well, I shouldn\u2019t say \u201cweird,\u201d I should say avant garde<\/em>. I didn\u2019t enjoy it, but that\u2019s probably because I don\u2019t enjoy avant garde cinema in general. Still, this film stands out because it is an interpretation of an interpretation of the First World War.\"\"<\/p>\n

Released in 1989, the film tells a war story, but without any dialogue. Some sound comes from an occasional Wilfred Owen poem, but the film is really a showcase for War Requiem<\/em>, British composer Benjamin Brittain\u2019s orchestra tribute to the war. Brittain composed the score in the 1960s, but her never served in the War himself. He leaned heavily on Wilfred Owen\u2019s poetry, and the music itself is beautiful. It tells a story of a pointless, unending war. There\u2019s great sadness, but also little victories. Shame, joy, hope, and loss. It\u2019s all conveyed through the music, which makes me wonder why a movie version was even necessary.<\/p>\n

The cast, certainly, is star-studded. It stars a young Tilda Swinton, and Laurence Olivier even makes an appearance. There are portions where the characters have conversations with each other, but the audience can\u2019t hear what they\u2019re saying. Most of the acting is basically pantomime, and there are long stretches where the characters seem to be acting out some prearranged ceremony. I think, ultimately, that may be one of the points director Derek Jarman was trying to make. In a way, subsequent generations have reduced the people who lived through and died in the war\u2014people like Wilfred Owen, who\u2019s the main character of the movie\u2014into certain proscribed roles. X ordered Y to go to war and there Y was slaughtered.<\/p>\n

But maybe that point isn\u2019t for us, the people who had nothing to do with the War. The film places a huge emphasis on ritual. Tilda Swinton\u2019s Nurse crowns a dead Owen with his helmet. A priest sacrifices Owen while fat civilians in top hats and monocles watch. The Nurse crowns herself and other soldiers with a barbed wire crown meant to invoke Jesus\u2019 crown of thorns. Maybe the reason why the war began, and why it continued, was because the people in power didn\u2019t see their soldiers as humans, but as actors in some scripted, divinely blessed play.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m really not sure what to make of this movie. Its anti-war message is far from ambiguous, but it feels like a condemnation. The trouble is, I can\u2019t figure out what <\/em>it\u2019s condemning. The obvious answer is war and violence, but it feels like something more than that. Maybe I\u2019m searching for meaning where there is none. I think, instead of trying to make sense of World War I, the point of War Requiem <\/em>is to show just how pointless it all actually is. But was just the war pointless, or is trying to interpret it pointless? That\u2019s definitely not a question I\u2019m prepared to answer.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We\u2019re ending our series on WWI films with War Requiem. I\u2019d never seen this movie before I watched it for this blog post, but I chose it for this series because it seemed nontraditional. Little did I know. This film was probably the weirdest movie I\u2019ve ever seen. Well, I shouldn\u2019t say \u201cweird,\u201d I should […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2169\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}