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Documentary Review: Berlin 1945 (2020)

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by James Brown

Berlin in 1945: The German army made a last stand in April 1945 to defend Berlin against the Red Army, the capital was a frontline city for over two weeks, leading to widespread devastation (Image credit: BBC)

The BBC’s Answer to Svetlana Alexievich at Remembrance Weekend

The 11 November 2020 marked the strangest day of remembrance in British history. In a country where the World Wars form the central pillars of national memory, the wartime style disruptions of COVID-19 meant the usual parades and ceremonies could not take place. Yet nonetheless, what did occur, as usual, was the remembrance of war as it takes place each year on television screens across the country.

Next to the broadcast of the traditional ceremonies, films and documentaries about the World Wars are traditionally shown as part of a period of reflection. The schedule, however, is often quite repetitive with the same heroic war films and armchair-general-type shows being re-run each year. There are comparatively few solemn attempts at reflection, particularly ones which highlight the multinational character of the conflict and the plight of civilians on all sides of the battle. That is why it was so refreshing to see the BBC release a new documentary that focuses on the civilian experience of war, Berlin 1945.

Berlin 1945 has an enticingly simple format: voice actors read diary entries from civilians and soldiers written in the year 1945 while their photographs and archive footage features on screen. The narrative focuses on the city of Berlin during the Second World War’s twilight period but includes voices from the allied side as well. The choice of the single city of Berlin gives the documentary a positionality that captures not only the creeping encirclement of Germany, but also how the military struggles enacted from the Berghof, Washington D.C., Moscow, and London were converging at a single point after years of bloodshed across far-flung corners of the world.

Those whose diaries are read out, and at whose lives we are allowed to look at their bleakest and most human, include conscripted 16-year old soldiers, a Jewish woman in hiding, worried mothers, fathers, and children. We also encounter enforced labourers from France and Eastern Europe, exhausted Soviet ground troops, and allied pilots conducting massive bombing raids over Berlin. Their stories tell of the desperation faced by Berliners and the intensity of WWII’s final days.

It is a Kafkaesque tale of daily struggles not just to survive, but also of the attempts to preserve remnants of normality as the Red Army exacts extreme military and sexual violence on Berlin’s civilian population, especially the women. People continue to watch light entertainment films at the cinema and return to finish them even after the viewing is interrupted by air raids. Family and friends still gather for schnapps before they listen to Hitler’s latest morale-boosting radio broadcast. Teenage air-craft gunners try to shoot down Allied bombers, intermittently referring to each other as comrades and classmates. And all the while inane Nazi propaganda continues to bleat promises of future victory even as the Third Reich’s armed forces melt away before the people’s eyes.

The Red Flag hoisted over the Reichstag in 1945 (Image credit: BBC)

While watching, I was reminded of Svetlana Alexievich, the 2015 Nobel Literature Laureate, and her oral chronicles of the Second World War and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (1979-1989). Her books are not novels or histories, but rather written choruses of individual voices who have borne witness to the tragedies of war. Uniquely, Alexievich is especially attentive to the experiences of Soviet women and children during these conflicts and her Unwomanly Face of War (2018) and Last Witnesses (2020) respectively cover the experiences of each group throughout WWII. As in Britain, the Second World War in the post-Soviet countries, known there as the Great Patriotic War, also occupies a central place in national histories. There too, the focus is on the story of the soldiers. Like Alexievich’s books, the BBC’s Berlin 1945 adds vital voices to the story of WWII which are frequently ignored.

Berlin 1945’s appearance this Remembrance Weekend, with its emphasis on the civilian and multinational side of conflict, also connects with the growing debate over how Britain should remember its wars. The country finds it difficult to discuss changing the focus of remembrance. When alternatives to the mainstream narrative are proposed; for example, as opposed to traditional red poppies, wearing white or black ones which highlight civilian and African or Caribbean experiences respectively, it provokes a visceral and corrosive backlash (the poppy issue imbricates broadcasters especially, including the BBC). A production like Berlin 1945, which is also significant for giving a humanised portrait of the enemy German population, helps remind us how conflict damages all human lives, on and away from the front, and gives voice to some of the forgotten victims of war.

Berlin 1945 is available on BBC iPlayer now.

James Brown is a PhD candidate in history at Northumbria University. His focus is on Soviet dissidents and their use in the politics and international relations of the Cold War. He previously studied at Glasgow University, doing a Master’s in East European, Russian, and Eurasian studies. During this time he studied Russian and wrote his thesis, ‘Returning to Machiavelli: Giving Belarus-Russia relations the Original Realist Treatment’, which received the prize for best dissertation from the Centre for East European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at Glasgow.

Strife Feature - Imagining War in Film: The Algerian War in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and Winds of the Aures

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By Uygar Baspehlivan

In Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin (1925) or Michael Cimino’s Deer Hunter (1976) after the Vietnam War, the medium of cinema performed as an agent for shaping how war, conflict, and trauma were visualised and resonated in collective memory for years to come.

Cinema - with its potential for access, emotional resonance, and for creating visually-charged meaning - has been significant in the construction and dissemination of cultural ideas and identities and for the molding of specific, nationalized narratives of historical events in the last century.

During the presidencies of Charles de Gaulle in France (whose strict censorship policies meant the state had a monopoly in the representations of Algeria in France [1]) and Houari Boumédiène in Algeria (who, with the National Liberation Front –FLN- owned and funded almost the entire Algerian movie industry in the 60s [2]), popular cinema functioned simultaneously as a medium of distraction from the post-independence realities both countries were facing, and as a form of nationalist propaganda. In France, this control of the movie industry served to promote a denialist narrative of the struggles and sufferings of the Algerians as well as the dangers faced by the French soldiers in the Algerian War. Similarly, in Algeria, movies of the so-called cinema moudjahid were instrumentalised as means to producing a new post-colonial mythology of the new Algerian nation. In the absence of a strong academic infrastructure or established national history, movies produced by the FLN that told the story of courageous Algerian guerrilla who emancipated the nation from colonial forces became the primary agents for constructing a national history and collective identity. In addition to being a part of FLN’s Islamic Socialist propaganda, these movies also acted as a distraction from problems of corruption, economic crisis and women’s rights that the newly-founded Algerian state was struggling with after its independence.

This article observes how the Algerian war and the colonial experience were perceived and constructed around a binary depicting the visual imaginaries of the colonised and the coloniser.

Umbrellas of Cherbourg

“Umbrellas of Cherbourg”, directed by Jacques Demy in 1967, is a cheerful and romantic musical that portrays the struggles of two young French lovers as Guy – the male protagonist- is drafted to fight in the Algerian war. The movie depicts the love triangle Genevieve (the female protagonist) finds herself in, undecided between waiting for her lover fighting in Algeria or choosing a rich and handsome Roland Cassard who can provide her and her mother with economic stability. As one of the first French movies that attempted to deal with the Algerian War after its independence, the fact that Algeria itself is not even shown in the movie but rather depicted as a distant and exotic place that became an inconvenience and a simple plot point in the love lives of two French lovers is arguably a testament to the reduced status of the war in the French national imagination. War, in post-war French memory, was relevant only to the extent of its effects on the lives of the French, completely disregarding the amount of mutual destruction inflicted during the war.

The Algerian philosopher Mostefa Lacheraf called cinema moudjahid “a pseudo-patriotic exploitation of war heroism…which diverted the people from the new realities”.[3]
The movie’s use of bright colours, fancy costumes and depiction of the domestic space as a place of comfort from the problems outside lent a false optimism and luxury that was contrasted with the unknown space of Algeria, where the main protagonist has to go to “serve his country.” Considering how post-war France was struggling with the influx of Algerian immigrants and refugees entering the country, the creation and representation of a safe, hygienic domestic space established an exclusionist logic where the streets of France are full of Algerian immigrants who are treated as the “outsider”.

Continuing the colonial tradition of representing Algeria without depicting Algerians, observed in earlier famous colonial films such as L’Atlantide (1921) or Le Grand Jeu (1935), the movie treats Algeria as an exotic yet dangerous landscape. The only shot of Algeria present in the movie is when Genevieve looks at a postcard sent by Guy where he is standing next to a Moorish archway.

The only shot of Algeria present in the movie is when Genevieve looks at a postcard sent by Guy where he is standing next to a Moorish archway.

In this representation, Algeria is merely a touristic landscape that is protected by the French soldier. Algerians or signs of Algerian life are non-existent. As Guy Austin interprets it aptly; “Algeria and its population are out of sight, through the empty arch, while the photo itself is framed by Genevieve’s letter written naturally enough in French. The war is framed by a French romance, and exists only insofar as it tells about French lovers; Algerians remain invisible - always off-screen.”[4]

The reduced status of the war becomes clearer when Genevieve reads a letter from Guy where he talks about how a patrol was ambushed by Algerians. However, immediately after this anecdote, he emphasises that there actually “is not much danger in Algeria”. The war isn’t important; it is a minor inconvenience that poses little threat to the protagonist’s life. As the audience, we know that he will survive. Not only the suffering of Algerians, but also the danger the French soldiers found themselves in during the war is disregarded and put aside in the movie.

Winds of the Aures

Winds of the Aures (1966), an Algerian movie directed by acclaimed director Mohamed Lakhdar Hamina which won the Palme d’Or prize at the Cannes Film Festival, on the other hand, paints a completely opposite picture of the Algerian war that catered towards an Algerian imagination. A war-time drama about the journey of a mother trying to find her son who was kidnapped by French colonial forces, the 90-minute showcase of Algerian suffering acts as a propaganda tool for FLN’s specific form of Islamic Socialist nationalism. As per FLN’s official policy of bringing about “the restoration of the sovereign, democratic and social Algerian state within the framework of Islamic principles[5]”, the movie’s depiction of how religion and collective Algerian activity worked jointly to bring an end to the century-old colonial rule is an endeavour in constructing a direct link between Islam and Collectivism. As the movie starts with the the adhan (the Islamic call to prayer) suppressed by sounds of conflict, symbolising how colonial domination subjugated the Algerian Islamic identity, it aspires to show how Islam and Algeria’s Islamic identity endured despite the efforts of the colonisers. Representing the Algerian villager as pious and devout, Hamina performs a normative identity making that connects the struggle to religion.

The first thirty minutes of the movie keep up with this collectivist narrative and is dedicated to the daily routines of Algerian peasants working in the village and bringing help to FLN fighters. While French cinema largely attempted to empty Algeria of Algerians, this film defied colonial narratives, showcases the daily lives of Algerian villagers working the soil, producing and consuming. It transformed the exotic landscape of French imagination into a territory filled with indigenous people. This representation of collective activity, playing into the FLN’s socialist Islamic identity, functions in creating a mythology of common collective struggle against colonialism.

Rather than a realistic representation of wartime rural Algeria, the movie’s narrative attempts to reproduce, in the words of Mani Sharpe, “a monolithic Algeria as a tabula rasa cleansed of cultural, social, economic, religious and gendered tensions that in reality characterised the post-colonial nation-state.

Unfortunately, Winds of the Aures can’t escape from the nationalist logic of inclusion and exclusion as it fails to reflect the historical reality of the Algerian war that was rife with internal strife and elite intervention. Disregarding diversity, individuality, and locality in favour of a homogeneous representation of collective peasantry; Hamina uses cinema as an attempt to draw a unified national history. The movie, as it represents a collective struggle of emancipation against the French, therefore, appears to conform to Ella Shohat’s definition of third-world films as using “the expulsion of the colonial intruder” in a cinematic praxis of “national becoming” This depiction of collective wartime heroism - similar to France - diverts attention away from the economic, political and social realities of post-independence Algeria. The glorification of the movie’s female protagonist, as she goes through hell to save his son, for instance, distracts from the fact that many women lost their privileged wartime status after independence and were forced to return to their Islamic domestic lives.

The emotional resonance of an audio-visual representation becomes a medium through which national and cultural ideas and stories are cultivated and disseminated.

The historical context in which the movie came out is also important, in that cinema is particularly receptive and representative of the cultural environment of its period. A year before the movie was distributed, in 1965, Colonel Boumédiène seized power following a coup d’état. His project entailed a rewriting of Algerian history to provide the country with a unitary national identity. Since there had not really been an Algerian national identity until the 1950s, the peoples living in Algeria found in Islam a central mark of their identity, as it was the element that united them all despite the local differences. Thus, he was able to affirm that Algerians were Muslims and Arabs, a claim that disregarded the wide variety of non-Arab tribes that had lived in Algeria for centuries. This dismissal of the country’s diversity is reflected in the movie itself, which constitutes an attempt to create a unitary, post-colonial national identity, rooted in Islam, in line with Boumédiène’s plan.

The analysis of these two movies reveals that the memory of trauma and conflict can be shaped by nationalist narratives. This constitution and disciplining of memory is primarily exercised by state-controlled or state-censored cinema serving specific narratives regarding the nature, subjects, and motives of the Algerian war. In the end, we observe how both representations of the conflict divert attention from the realities of post-war nation-building. This helps recognise the (re)productive power of visual media in framing and constituting meaning and identity. The struggle for narrative eminence between Algerian and French filmmakers is a testament to the fact that artistic expression is yet another site for political struggles over power and identity.

Uygar Baspehlivan is a graduate of War Studies at King’s College London. He is about to commence his postgraduate studies in Theory and History of International Relations at the London School of Economics. His research interests include nationalism, critical theory, and film theory.

Notes:

[1] Guy Austin, “Trauma, Cinema and the Algerian War” New Readings 10 (2011), p.18-19

[2] Guy Austin, “Representing the Algerian War in Algerian Cinema: Le Vent Des Aures”, French Studies 61:2

[3] Cited in Guy Hennebelle, “Cinema Djidid”, in Algerian Cinema, p.28

[4] Guy Austin, “Representing the Algerian War in Algerian Cinema: Le Vent Des Aures”, French Studies 61:2

[5] Daho Djerbal, “The National Liberation Front (FLN) and Islam Concerning the Relationship between the political and religious in Contemporary Algeria” The Journal of Sophia Asian Studies No.25 (2007) p.1.

[6] Mani Sharpe, Gender and Space in Post-Colonial French and Algerian Cinema

[7] Mani Sharpe, Gender and Space in Post-Colonial French and Algerian Cinema

 

Film Review: Zero Days (2016)

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Gibney, A. Zero Days, Jigsaw Productions, (2016). (PG-13) More information from: http://gb.imdb.com/title/tt5446858/.

By: Cheng Lai Ki

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“The science fiction cyberwar scenario is here…” This statement comes from members of the United States National Security Agency (NSA), and others in the intelligence community, role-played by actress Joanne Tucker. Zero Days, directed and narrated by documentarian Alex Gibney – who produced the award winning documentaries Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005) and Taxi to the Dark Side (2007) – explores the evolving nature of computer network exploitations (CNEs). In a world where critical infrastructures (i.e. energy suppliers, telecommunication infrastructures), military communication grids (i.e. US Global Information Grid - GIG) and diplomatic communications are conducted on information-communication technologies (ICTs); the documentary illuminates the uncomfortable realities and vulnerabilities within cyberspace.

Zero Days explores StuxNet, a computer worm developed by a US-Israeli effort to cripple the uranium enrichment capabilities at the Natanz enrichment plant in Iran. The documentary debuted at the 2016 Berlin film festival and was awarded a four-star review by the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw, who described Gibney’s 2016 documentary as ‘intriguing and disturbing’. Named after the technical term ‘zero day’ that represents a computer network vulnerability that is only known to the attacker, the investigative documentary tells Gibney’s journey in uncovering ‘the truth’ behind StuxNet’s technical capabilities and attributed political motives. Despite discussing a cybersecurity threat, the documentary goes beyond the technical landscape and introduces various geopolitical elements within – such as the Israeli disapproval of Iran cultivating national nuclear capabilities. Given the relative basic nature of its discussions, this documentary appears to be intended for the general public rather than specialists in the field. However, Gibney appears to have followed along an investigative journalistic approach (something he undoubtedly is famous for) and guides the viewer along a path of what essentially is a cyber-attribution journey implicating the US and Israeli agencies. The documentary was constructed with strategically cut interviews from cybersecurity specialists (i.e. Kaspersky; Symantec), former senior-leaderships from ‘three-letter’ government agencies, industrial experts (i.e. Ralph Langner, a German Control System Security consultant) and pioneers within the investigative journalism (i.e. David Sanger) in discussing StuxNet’s discovery and capabilities. In addition to these interviews, Gibney wanted a more ‘real’ source of information. This was where the anonymous NSA intelligence community came in. Collectively using transcripts of these employees (and the help of actress Joanne Tucker), Gibney was able to incorporate an inside-source that gave this documentary a little more power behind its claims.

A collection of Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) that are crucial technological components within most critical infrastructure. The StuxNet worm targeted specficially the Siemens Simatic S7-300 PLC CPU with three I/O modules attached.

The documentary excels in unveiling to the general public that: i) cybersecurity is not purely a software issue, but also a hardware one; and ii) digital-malware can be easily weaponised for intelligence gathering and strike purposes.

First, Symantec Security Response specialist, Eric Chien, states in an interview: ‘…real-world physical destruction. [Boom] At that time things became really scary for us. Here you had malware potentially killing people and that was something that was Hollywood-esque to us; that we’d always laugh at, when people made that kind of assertion.’ Through conducting a simple experiment where Symantec specialists infected a Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) – the main computer control unit of most facility control systems – with the StuxNet worm. Under normal conditions, the PLC was programed to inflate a balloon and stop after five-seconds. However, after being infected with the StuxNet worm, the PLC ignored commands to stop the inflation and the balloon burst after being continuously filled with air. Through this simple experiment, the specialists (and Gibney) managed to reveal the devastating impact of vulnerable computer systems that control our national critical infrastructures or dangerous facilities such as Natanz.

Second, the NSA employees that decided to talk to Gibney revealed who the US cyber intelligence community recruits and more importantly, their capacities to create digital-techniques for intelligence gathering – or in the case of StuxNet, strike purposes. Cybersecurity specialists that were analysing the StuxNet code discovered older versions that were focused on data-collection. It wasn’t until the later versions that more offensive objectives were made more apparent within the code. According to forthcoming NSA employees, this shift within the code was done by the Israeli foreign intelligence services (Mossad) and not the American agencies. Regardless, Zero Days does an excellent job in revealing the highly adaptive nature of cyber ordinances.

national_security_agency_headquarters_fort_meade_maryland
The United States National Security Agency (NSA) at Fort Meade, Maryland. There, information technology experts developed the multiple version of the StuxNet worm at the Cyber Command unit (USCYBERCOM) established in 2009 that was housed wihtin.

However, to security academics, this documentary suffers from several limitations undermining its credibility. Two of its main limitations are: i) over centralization on investigative attribution; and ii) inherently negative portrayal of governmental personnel and activity.

First, as earlier mentioned, the documentary is a journey of cyber-attribution at its core – much akin to the work of investigative journalist, David Sanger. To show this, we need to review the structure of the documentary. It begins with discussing the cybersecurity incident, how the worm was found, and how it baffled cybersecurity specialists. Next, the documentary explains the geopolitical and security tensions between the US, Israel and Iran; in addition to discussing the American position on Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Next, it progressed onto the technical and security domains; explaining the infrastructure of American and Israeli cyber-intelligence capabilities and operations. Finally, Gibney asks harder questions of implications and opinions during his interviews with American intelligence, security and military subjects. Obviously, for national security and secrecy reasons, these could not be answered. It would appear that Gibney wanted to ask these questions to highlight his disgust in the lack of transparency within the security sector. Throughout the late part of the documentary, he supplements various claims with an informal-esque interview with the NSA employees using Joanne Tucker as an avatar. To the general public, this documentary is undoubtedly an interesting journey of exploration and revelation about American and Israeli cyber capabilities. While highlighting several cybersecurity concerns afflicting cybersecurity specialists in governmental and industrial sectors, the documentary quickly narrows its attributive direction towards the United States and Israel - leaving little room for alternative arguments.

Second, to security specialists this documentary leaves out several key areas of consideration, such as the crucial importance of having an effective intelligence collection and pre-emptive strike capabilities for reasons of national security. During interviews with government leaderships, they were either explaining the structure of their national intelligence agencies/capabilities or talking about how certain operations were transferred between presidents – StuxNet was known within the American government community as ‘The Olympic Games’. As such, government interviewees played only an informative role, participating in few discussions. Another comment would be on the NSA employees that decided to be vocal. Playing the devil’s advocate, certain questions about credibility and accuracy can be raised: How do we know these were really NSA employees from their cyber divisions? Do we know if they are really vocalizing because they wanted to? Or were they instructed to? There was a significant amount of blame placed on Mossad for ‘weaponizing’ the StuxNet code when the Americans just wanted to utilise it solely for intelligence collection purposes. Within the realms of intelligence, this sounds more like disinformation rather than truth. To some civil-servants from security or intelligence backgrounds, this documentary appears to portray such government operations in a negative light and perpetuates the concept of transparency with little regard for its ramifications. Sometimes, knowing the ‘truth’ might do more harm than good.

Zero Days is an excellent documentary and investigatory source of information that raises awareness of cybersecurity issues and its importance in our modernized era. First, its innovative and effective use of animations coupled with strategic uses of interviewees from various backgrounds provides it credibility and persuasiveness when discussing StuxNet. Second, it increases awareness about the importance of cultivating a better understanding of cybersecurity and how vulnerable digital and hardware systems can have significantly harmful consequences. However, in his quest to push for transparency behind government intelligence operations, Zero Days promotes a dangerous notion. Operational secrecy is not a negative notion but sometimes vital for national security. The ubiquitous nature of cyberspace, like Pandora’s Box, opens nations to a new dimension of threats that cannot be as easily defended like that of Air, Land, or Sea and increased transparency can deal much more harm. Regardless your position regarding the motives behind Zero Days, it remains an excellent documentary in raising cybersecurity awareness.

Zero Days (2016) Documentary Trailer:

 

Cheng served as an Amour Officer and Training Instructor at the Armour Training Institute (ATI) in the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) and now possesses reservist status. His master’s research revolves around security considerations within the Asia-Pacific Region and more specifically around areas of Cybersecurity, Maritime Security and Intelligence Studies. His Graduate thesis explores the characteristics and trends defining China’s emerging Cybersecurity and Cyberwarfare capabilities. He participated in the April 2016 9/12 Cyber Student Challenge in Geneva and has been published in IHS Janes’s Intelligence Review in May 2016. You can follow him on Twitter @LK_Cheng

 

Notes:

Bradshaw, P. ‘Zero Days review – a disturbing portrait of malware as the future of war’, The Guardian, Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/feb/17/zero-days-review-malware-cyberwar-berlin-film-festival, (17 Feb 2016).

Gibney, A. ‘Director Profile’, JigSaw Productions, Available from: http://www.jigsawprods.com/alex-gibney/ (Accessed October 2016).

Internatinale Filmfestipiele Berlin 2016, Film File: Zero Days (Competition), Available from: https://www.berlinale.de/en/archiv/jahresarchive/2016/02_programm_2016/02_Filmdatenblatt_2016_201608480.php#tab=filmStills (2016)

Langer, R. ‘Cracking Stuxnet, a 21st-century cyber weapon’, TEDTalk, Available from: https://www.ted.com/talks/ralph_langner_cracking_stuxnet_a_21st_century_cyberweapon/transcript?language=en, (Mar 2011)

Lewis, J.A. ‘In Defense of Stuxnet’, Military and Strategic Affairs, 4(3), Dec 2012, pp.65 – 76.

Macaulay, S. ‘Wrong Turn’, FilmMaker, Available from: http://www.filmmakermagazine.com/archives/issues/winter2008/taxi.php#.V-A8_Tvouu5, (2008).

Scott, A.O. ‘Those You Love to Hate: A Look at the Mighty Laid Low’, The New York Times, Available from: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/22/movies/those-you-love-to-hate-a-look-at-the-mighty-laid-low.html?_r=1, (Apr 22 2005).

Image Source (1): https://i.ytimg.com/vi/GlC_1gZfuuU/maxresdefault.jpg

Image Source (2): https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/SIMATIC_different_equipment.JPG

Image Source (3): https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/84/National_Security_Agency_headquarters,_Fort_Meade,_Maryland.jpg

 

 

An analysis of Omar: a film by Hany Abu-Assad

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By: Bradley Lineker

Author’s note: The film, Omar, was released on 30 May 2014. Analysis herein contains spoilers.

Omar - Palestinian film by Hany Abu-Assad 2013 - Cartel salta muro

 

Omar, as the latest film written and directed by Hany Abu-Assad, is a compelling political drama set in the West Bank that skilfully depicts the dangerous spider’s web of Israeli occupation around a young Palestinian dissident and his love, after he takes part in an act of rebellion with his two childhood friends.

The film begins with Omar (played by Adam Baktri) illegally climbing the 18-foot West Bank separation wall to visit his high-school sweetheart, Nadia (Leem Lubany). Soon after, Omar and his two friends, Anjam (Samer Bisharat), and Nadia’s brother, Tarek (Eyad Hourani), attack an Israeli checkpoint. Because of this, Omar is later captured and then coerced into working as a double agent by the Le Carré-esque Israeli Agent Rami (Waleed Zuaiter). Rami releases Omar from prison, who, amid intense stigmatization, attempts to find out who betrayed him and his friends. Events escalate until Omar is left almost totally under the thrall of Agent Rami, whose influence erodes the trust that existed between him and those around him, and Omar is gradually pushed towards killing his two friends to save himself and Nadia.

The film’s artistry is seen in its subtle portrayal of the ways in which the occupation frames and shapes the characters. Visually superb, it moves from darkened, tight-angled shots of the Israeli prison where Omar was held, to the tiny interconnected Palestinian neighbourhoods, into wider, sun-drenched backdrops of wasteland where Omar and his friends try to get time and space away from the occupation forces. Much of these shots are centered around the tight frames of the two main characters, Omar and Nadia, which, while supposedly intimate, further contributes to the unrelenting sense of latent danger – especially when the viewer is led to believe that Nadia may be the Israeli snitch.

In some ways, the occupation itself is the core focus of the film that, while dramatised through a tight group of characters, nevertheless underplays much of what happens on the screen. This is because the film offers a fascinating portrait of the subtle ways that the occupation frames and then insidiously reshapes existence: it is depicted as an infection that seeps into the natural and unspoken gaps between friends and family, and in these dark edges, steadily festers, making the individual suspect everyone of betrayal.

The wider Israeli occupation is itself only abstractly introduced at the start through Omar climbing the imposing 18-foot separation wall, and is only then explained as the narrative unfolds. Interestingly, it is Agent Rami, the film’s tangible manifestation of the Israeli occupation regime, who offers the most cogent explanation. He describes how one petty-resistance leader is assassinated, another comes to take his place, and thus his job is a cyclical quest to gain leverage on whomever comes into power – a process that serves as a metaphor for the wider occupation. Moreover, the highly-visible technology of the occupation forces – from their stun grenades, high-tech assault rifles, helicopters and prison systems – is contrasted with the three friends, whose attempts at resistance rely on an old bolt-action rifle and meetings in wasteland areas. This minimalist-critique arguably comes to a head at the end of the film, as Agent Rami attempts to compare his pistol to the svelte-body of a woman. The viewer can’t help but compare his hollow and half-hearted metaphor to the reality of the sacrifices Omar has made throughout the film for Nadia, his own love. This restrained, often abstract, way of discussing the conflict is highly effective, as it sidesteps much of the politics that weighs-down the Israel-Palestine issue, and allows the viewer to reach their own conclusions about what they see on the screen.

This subtle and sympathetic approach to the characters is also afforded to the society in which they live. The formal social code that governs onscreen Palestinian interaction is so well built up during the course of the film that, without it being a distraction, it artfully weaves into the overall narrative, enabling the viewer to understand and sympathise with the constraints on Omar towards the end. For instance, the scene where Omar is talking to Nadia in Anjam’s house, a house and family that the viewer knows Omar was set-up to give away, was truly haunting in view of portraying how the social structures have essentially trapped them in their respective roles, despite Omar figuring out how Anjam has betrayed him. Within such scenes is the implicit statement of how the influence of the occupation regime itself warps such social formalities, so that they become constraining – this is certainly true of Agent Rami’s intimation of Nadia’s infidelity.

Despite the film’s great strengths, its highly compact plot felt unnecessarily convoluted at times, which, coupled with its relatively sparse use of dialogue, could prove to be confusing in patches. For instance, much of the ending depended upon one critical piece of dialogue between Omar and Nadia, which, if missed, would have left the viewer unsure about Omar’s actions at the end. While the betrayal was artfully constructed to complement the insidiousness of the occupation, it could have been depicted in clearer terms. Moreover, there were some plot-holes, such as the ambush scene, where the trio of friends each take up an AK-47, despite being depicted earlier in the film painstakingly learning how to use a bolt-action rifle. But on the whole, these issues are largely irrelevant for appreciating the film’s style and purpose.

The dark beauty of the film lies in the way it entombs the main character in a smothering claustrophobia – from having to daily climb an 18 foot wall to see his love, or facing the ultimate choice of killing either Agent Rami or Anjam – which powerfully portrays the nature of occupation to the viewer. In sum, Omar is a visually beautiful film with an exceptional way of introducing very large and emotional themes, but in subtle and sympathetic ways.

Fury: War up close and personal

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By Alex Calvo:

FURY

Since the birth of cinema, war has been a perennial source of inspiration for films. However, the resulting genre is anything but uniform. Under the label “war film” one can find a wide spectrum of films, going from mere action filled with special effects (sometimes referred to as “war porn”) to pacifist pamphlets seeking to denounce the futility of a given conflict or of warfare in general. And there are many sub-categories in between, including historical films and biopics of famous generals. Within the historical film genre, one finds a similar range to that observable in military history scholarship, with some works covering a whole war or campaign, while others focus on some limited action or the experience of a small group of soldiers. Fury, which came out late last year and stars Brad Pitt, Shia LaBeouf, Logan Lerman, Michael Peña and Jon Bernthal, belongs to this latter category.

The viewer is told the setting is Germany, in the closing weeks of the Second World War, but other than that much of the action takes place in the narrow confines of a tank. When not inside the tank we see - at most - a road, a village, or a field, never more than that. This is a film with no generals, no large armies, and no big battles. Engagements feature no more than a few tanks and a handful of troops and other vehicles. This is war up close and personal, war in small scale, war centered on the individual and a small closely-knit group of fellow warriors bent on survival.While not the first war film to adopt that perspective, what stands out in Fury is the balance between the experience of the individuals in the small group and the wider conflict. This is no individualistic, self-centred tale of a soldier’s suffering, disconnected from the reasons for why a war is being fought. Nor is it a mechanistic depiction of a small unit simply following orders on their path to victory and glory. What we find instead, in line with the real-life experience of many combatants, is a group of soldiers determined to do their job, do it well, watch each other’s back, survive, and go home as soon as possible.

This does not mean that the wider political and moral background to the war is forgotten. On the contrary, there is no room for moral relativism in Fury, no attempt to portray the two sides as equal or even comparable, and no room for historical revisionism or the obsession of some media outlets with the misguided notion that the war was won by virtue of strength of numbers and superior firepower alone. As Fury makes clear, regardless of Allied superiority, victory came through myriad small actions and the sacrifice of ordinary troops.

Fury is a story where good fights evil, but is more nuanced than the standard good/bad war films. It avoids cartoon-like characterizations, and focuses on how the motivation to engage in battle comes more from frontline experience – the desire to protect your brothers-in-arms and the raw hatred of the enemy – than from any overarching ideological doctrines. Again, as many with actual combat experience will attest, in many conflicts newly-arrived soldiers will lack the necessary degree of hate towards the enemy to successfully engage them in the field of battle. This was the case even in WWII, a conflict marked by a clear ideological difference between the two sides. The film shows this, taking us through the painful but ultimately essential process through which the tank’s newest crew member comes to understand the rules of the game, not through theoretical lectures on the evils of Nazism, but through a combination of peer pressure, father-like mentoring, actual engagements, fear of death, and the ultimate realization that this is a very different world from the one back home.

Fury is also a story that examines in detail the tight bonds among men who live, eat, and fight together every day, knowing it could be their last. It is done, furthermore, in a realistic way, showing the viewer the different facets of an essential yet often difficult relationship between very different people. This is no group of flawless heroes, they are all different and they often clash, most notably when arguing about the language to be used inside the tank, and then again during the discussions about religion, and most tellingly in their encounter with a German family. These clashes contribute to the credibility of the film, making its characters believable.

The same nuanced approach is in evidence in the way that the film deals with relations between soldiers and civilians, on both sides, and between the crumbling Nazi regime and its population and troops. The suffering of refugees and of civilians caught up in the midst of combat is portrayed openly and in all its cruelty, without embellishment, in a matter-of-fact way, as an unavoidable aspect of war. The same realism is on display when soldiers and civilians meet, including the long lunch scene, one of the most intimate passages of the film.

Central to this very realistic portrayal of combat, and the true nature of war, is the film’s score. Deeply dark, yet full of grit and action when suitable, it succeeds in creating the necessary atmosphere for the viewer to fully absorb the main characters’ experience, and gain a glimpse of what the experience of combat is like. The film’s historical credentials are also supported by meticulous attention to detail when it comes to unif­orms and equipment. For example, we see the only remaining working Tiger tank, captured in Tunisia in 1943 and part of the collection of the Bovington Tank Museum. To ensure combat scenes were realistic, the help of four tank veterans was enlisted, among them 91-year old Bill Betts, a Sherman radio operator in the Essex Yeomanry and a D-day veteran, who was shot by a German sniper. While older films like Patton avoid the gory depiction of combat wounds, and Saving Private Ryan’s opening scene gives viewers a no-holds-barred look of a battlefield, Fury walks a careful path, showing the impact of war on combatants yet without distracting viewers from the film’s narrative.

Fury is many things. It is a tale of a small group of men brought together by war, and their ordeal to fight to live another day. It is the story of a newly arrived recruit and his rapid - albeit painful - integration into the group and his discovery of what war and fighting is about. The film is a reminder that WWII was, up to the last minute, a brutal struggle, where despite Allied material superiority there was always the need for close combat, with victory in battle often coming at a staggering cost. It is also an examination of the difficult moral choices one has to make on the battlefield. Fury is also an attack on moral relativism, making it clear who was on the right side of history, while showing us in detail how a green soldier came to understand it.

In a world which has not yet said goodbye to war, where it is often fashionable to commemorate wars without actually looking at combat, Fury is a necessary film. It reminds us that war is violent and painful but sometimes necessary, and that WWII was not won just because of material superiority, but because of the small groups of soldiers who fought to the last moment in unimaginable circumstances.

Alex Calvo is a student at Birmingham University’s MA in Second World War Studies program. He is the author of ‘The Second World War in Central Asia: Events, Identity, and Memory’, in S. Akyildiz and R. Carlson ed., Social and cultural Change in Central Asia: The Soviet Legacy (London: Routledge, 2013) and tweets at @Alex__Calvo. His work can be found here.