Oscar-nominated thriller offers the gritty realism of a war film turned into courtroom drama
POINTS: 7
Oscar nominated for Best Foreign Film A War (Krigen), written and directed by Tobias Lindholm, first and foremost follows Claus M. Pedersen (Pilou Asbaek), a Danish army commander in Afghanistan who strives hard to hold his unit together after one of his men dies after stepping on a mine. Intrepid and humanistic, Pedersen cares a great deal for his soldiers and is always willing to go more than the proverbial extra mile to protect them. He’s what you’d call a true leader.
Secondly, A War focuses on the home front, back in Denmark, where Claus’ wife Maria (Tuva Novotny) tries to hold daily life together with three young children and a husband on the frontline. All of them miss Claus and to different extents, they all suffer from his absence. Switching back and forth, these home front scenes are intertwined with those on the war front to provide some insight on the war for those in Denmark.
During a routine mission, the soldiers’ unit is caught in heavy crossfire and, in order to save one of his men in dire need of medical attention, Claus is forced to make a judgment call, which ultimately ends up turning his life upside down. He orders a house to be bombed so that his soldier could be airlifted from the place.
That’s why during the film’s second half, Claus is back in Denmark in a courtroom accused of killing 11 civilians (eight kids included) as a result of his perhaps not-so-sound decision. If there really was an enemy in the house, then Claus’ bombing would be justified. Otherwise, it wouldn’t, and he would have to spend four years behind bars. Which would end his career and be a disaster for his wife and his children who need him so much. Let alone for his own sense of justice and pride. After all, he truly is a good soldier. It’s the war that’s maddening.
Lindholm’s third feature does have a fair number of assets in formal terms: it’s impeccably acted, it’s shot in a documentary-like approach that achieves a good dose of gritty realism, its tone is devoid of melodrama and any sugarcoating, it’s discreetly photographed with no embellishment or glorification of war, it establishes a compelling sense of an authentic war space, and it unfolds meticulously as a complex thriller too. Unlike many films on the same subject, it never simplifies its scenario. In fact, its no-frills, stripped-down narrative does emphasize the complexity of it all.
On the minus side, Claus’ wife and children are not developed as characters, but rather as acting figures to do this or that as the script requires. It would have been interesting to get into Maria’s heart and head rather than watch her from the outside. All the more so when Claus’ family gets to play such an important role in the film’s premise. Other than that, A War is a fine slow burner, a reflexive war-at-home movie which ends with a rightfully restrained and yet quite strong courtroom drama.
From an ideological point of view, there might be an aspect that’s not quite that accomplished. Without spoiling the ending, you could say that the filmmaker opts not to take sides on the outcome of the drama. What’s the importance of a soldier’s life? What’s the significance of villagers’ lives? What’s the price of lying? What’s the cost of morality? These and a couple of other questions are posed but no answers are given. In this regard, you could say the film allows viewers to make up their own minds, which will surely be divergent.
Then again, it could also be said that the filmmaker’s deliberate reluctance to state a viewpoint on his material is also a way of not wanting to deal with it, as if he were only interested in drawing a morally and ethically challenging scenario without daring to accompany it with his own discourse. If this is so, then the manoeuvre equals cheating, even if subtly done.
So you should watch the film for its many cinematic merits and then see what you make of its ideology take. A viewer’s personal perspective is a must in all films, but all the more so in this type of auteur works which don’t follow a predetermined blueprint.
production notes
A War / Krigen (Denmark, 2015). Written and directed by Tobias Lindholm. With: Pilou Asbaek, Tuva Novotny, Soren Malling, Charlotte Munck, Dar Salim, Dulfi Al-Jabouri. Cinematography: Magnus Nordenhof Jonck. Editing: Adam Nielsen. Running time: 115 minutes
@pablsuarezd
