First up, Armando Iannucci's 2009 offering, In the Loop.

Peter Bradshaw offers a good summing-up: "It is a satirical, cynical nightmare on the subject of the run-up, or blunder-up, to the war in Iraq, complete with the nastiest of PR attack dogs and the dodgiest of dossiers. It conjures up a compelling backstairs political world of anxiety and incompetence, bullying and humiliation."

Strictly speaking, Iraq is not mentioned. The unspecified conflict is referred to as "a war in the Middle East". But we all have a pretty good idea...

As James Berardinelli points out, party politics takes a back seat in this movie, a key message of which is that  belonging to one side or the other "is irrelevant when it comes to feeding the idiocy that is 21st century government".  And there's an awful lot of idiocy. Career-pole climbers, brutes, narcissists, manipulators, bunglers, blunderers, back-stabbers -- they're all here, in spades.

The most admirable character is US Army Lt. Gen. George Miller (played by James Gandolfini). He's firmly on the no-war team, pointing out: "This is the problem with civilians wanting to go to war. Once you've been there, once you've seen it, you never want to go again unless you absolutely f***ing have to. It's like France." OK, that coda is incomprehensible to us Francophiles, but he is American, remember.

To say this is a busy film is the grossest understatement. According to Graham Fuller, the insanely hyper effect is created by "shaky handheld camerawork, two-camera coverage, fast zooms, half-zooms, indistinct sound".

And also improvisation, it turns out. Gandolfini (who died in 2012) explains that Iannucci worked by first shooting scenes as scripted, then immediately reshooting them, but with the actors improvising, and in the final cut splicing the two versions together "to create that feeling of manic spontaneity".

The comedic style reminded me a little of The Hollowmen, an Australian series that first aired in 2008. I have to say I found The Hollowmen funnier, though.

Not that In the Loop was unfunny. Its satire is razor-sharp. And it did a particularly good job with incongruity (I'm remembering the scene where the general is punching troop availability figures into the first device to hand: a child's pink toy calculator with cartoon-style audio).

But the delivery was so fast-paced, and Malcolm, the prime minister's director of communications, so egregiously unlikeable, that I often found myself spinning and/or wincing instead of laughing.

Female characters seem to fare particularly badly. The ghastly Malcolm seems to have an especially vicious animus against Judy, the director of communications for the hapless development minister (although, in fairness, she seems to have perfected the art of ignoring Malcolm completely). And why give Karen, the anti-war US Assistant Secretary for Diplomacy, a bad case of bleeding gums? Is this a bleeding-hearts reference? Liza, Karen's report-writing aide, also regularly finds herself belittled by a male co-worker prophesying doom for her career.

I'll leave Berardinelli with the last word: "In the Loop is sometimes hilarious, but there's a sense of uneasiness that comes with the humor as we contemplate that the antics depicted on screen might be less satirical and more truthful than we might wish or hope."

We encounter a different kind of war story in David Oelhoffen's 2015 offering, Loin des Hommes (Far From Men). It's set in Algeria, in 1954, the year in which the National Liberation Front began armed action against the French colonizers, thereby kicking off the Algerian War of Independence, which would last until 1962.


All the photos in this post were taken in Morocco in 1994. When we watched Far From Men, we immediately thought: "Morocco". And sure enough, it was shot not in Algeria, but just over the border. This was, we are told, a logistic decision, rather than a political one. Any which way, the scenery is sublime, and its stark desert grandeur somehow connects with all three movies









After watching the movie, I read the short story by Albert Camus that inspired it:  L'Hote, a title usually translated as The Guest, although the word is an ambivalent one that can also mean "host". (There's an interesting commentary on the story here.)

It's a brief, spare tale, that's nevertheless quite powerful. 

At its heart is Daru, born and bred in Algeria, and very much regarding it as his only home. He is a primary teacher, operating out of a lonely school building where he also lives.

The surrounding land is bleak and unforgiving. Snow has been falling, after eight months of drought that have hit local families hard.

Into this desolate scene comes Balducci, a gendarme, leading by a rope another man -- who is never named, and referred to only as "L'Arabe". Balducci, citing manpower shortages and imminent revolt, tasks Daru with delivering the prisoner (who has killed his cousin) to Tanguit, the nearest administrative centre. In face of Daru's persistent refusal to take on this commission, Balducci eventually washes his hands of the matter, and departs, leaving the two men alone:

"In this desert, nobody, neither he nor his guest was anything. And yet, outside this desert, neither one of them, Daru knew, would have been able to truly live."

Daru treats his "guest" well. He feeds him, and makes up a bed for him in his own room. He passes a somewhat sleepless night, more because he is not used to sharing his sleeping space than because he is afraid of the other man. He hopes his lodger will take it upon himself to escape, but he doesn't. He stays, ready to do Daru's bidding.

In the morning, Daru feels slightly bad that he has parted with Balducci on bad terms. He'd dismissed him, he feels, as though he didn't want to feel he was in the same camp as the gendarme. But now he feels strangely empty and vulnerable.

He has not changed his mind about refusing to carry out Balducci's order, however. He is revolted by the Arab's crime, but "to deliver him up was contrary to honour: just thinking about it made him crazy with humiliation". So he leads the unnamed man to a parting of the ways. He gives him enough provisions for two days and some money, and he tells him he can go east to Tinguit, or he can take the track that crosses the plateau, where, after a day's march, he will find pastures and nomads who will take him in.

Daru leaves him, and sets off back home, but from the top of the hill he can see that the Arab is heading for Tinguit, judgement, and punishment.

Daru's role, however, has been misunderstood. When he returns to his school, he finds a message on the blackboard accusing him of  having "delivered up our brother", and warning him that he will pay.

"Daru looked at the sky, the plateau, and beyond, the invisible lands that stretched as far as the sea. In this vast country which he had so loved, he was alone."







Oelhoffen embellishes and diverges from this story in interesting ways.

Firstly, he provides the captured man, now called Mohamed, with more complex reasons for his apparent willingness to face French justice. He doesn't want to just escape, because that will let loose a cycle of retribution (between his family and the family of the cousin he killed for stealing his crops), and this will draw in his younger, more defenceless brothers. He doesn't want the cousin's family to kill him, because then his brothers will have to respond. If justice is done by the French, on the other hand, that will be the end of it. Everyone will be satisfied. Daru, conversely, does not seem convinced that French justice will be all that just.

Secondly, the movie gives Daru a back-story, making him the Algerian-born son of Spanish parents (these folk are nicknamed caracoles, or snails, because they bear their house on their back). He has fought in WWII, alongside Arabs, and at one point, he runs into a former comrade, who has now sided with the freedom-fighters, and who warns Daru that -- former comrade or not -- he would shoot him if he found him on the other side.

Thirdly, Daru's accompaniment of Mohamed is much extended, turning the movie into a kind of road-trip, except that there are no roads (which -- given that the men come under attack from various quarters -- are deemed too unsafe). Consistent with the genre, there's rain, thirst, tough terrain, and companionship; there are the shared jokes of rough overnight stops; there are hostile encounters -- with Mohamed's enemies, with suspicious freedom-fighters, and with French forces who have scant regard for the humanitarian conduct of conflict.

This journeying, it seems, is one of the factors that leads critics to describe Far From Men as a kind of Western. Peter Debruge, for example, maintains:  "By treating the story's epic High Plateau vistas the way John Ford did Monument Valley, Oelhoffen amplifies the moral concerns facing characters living just beyond the reach of civilization and law." To be honest, I've seen far too few Westerns to know whether this is fair comment.

Fourthly, Mohamed grows and develops as the road-trip unfolds. Bilge Elbiri: "[Mohamed's] character, seemingly new to a world of ruthless choices, goes from wide-eyed fear to quiet resignation; he becomes a man before our eyes. For all the setting’s historical specificity and import, watching these two make their way through this violent, beautiful landscape, we realize we’re seeing something far more timeless and elemental unfold." True. It is under Daru's tutelage, however, that Mohamed blossoms, and I couldn't entirely dissociate this trajectory from a faint whiff of colonialism.

And fifthly, Mohamed chooses differently. He chooses the nomads... We're not really sure what will become of Daru, although we're pretty clear he won't be leaving Algeria.







Trivia: Daru is played by Viggo Mortensen, who is quite the polyglot. Here he does French, Arabic, and Spanish, but his list also includes Danish and English (not to mention Elvish...).

So, another interesting comparison between book and film. And a bit of an incentive to read some more Algerian literature, which sounds extremely interesting. Certainly, the ghosts of the Algerian War are very much still present in contemporary France. Earlier this year, a government-commissioned report by historian Benjamin Stora seemed to upset most of the roughly seven million residents of France who have connections with its Algerian past, and did not meet with much enthusiasm in Algeria either. And the reactions to the report have exposed much broader questions about France's response to its colonial past.







Finally, spotlighting the battle for the environment, we have Benedikt Erlingsson's 2019 movie, Woman at War.

The woman in question is Halla, a 50-something Icelander, who in her spare time is a bold, innovative, and clandestine eco-warrior, out to hobble an environmentally damaging aluminium plant. She's not quite a one-woman army, as she's aided by a nervous young man from some government department, and then later by a sheep-farmer with a dog called (somewhat bizarrely) Woman.

Aluminium has been a bone of contention in Iceland for a while. So it's all very topical.

Even if you didn't sympathize with Halla's methods at the beginning, it would be hard not to get behind her when she's being hunted down by drones and helicopters and dogs and satellites, and the combined intelligence of the Western world (I loved it when, wearing a Nelson Mandela mask to conceal her face, she brings down a drone with her bow and arrow). And the movie subtly but powerfully exposes the way vested interests prevent any rational discussion of anything by immediately branding it "terrorism". David Ehrlich comments: "One especially clever sequence follows the anguished heroine as she runs down a residential street on which corporate-sponsored news reports about the upside of industrialization are blaring out of every house. Pregnant, faceless women rub their bellies as they blithely tune out pro-doomsday propaganda. Everyone is listening in, but not really hearing anything. It’s like Halla is stuck in a diorama of her own personal hell."







There's really lots to like about the movie. As we've found with other Icelandic productions we've watched recently, the sublime landscape plays a starring role all of its own. The character of Halla is also inspiring. Tough, idealistic, and active, she's a million miles from the stereotype of the 50s age-group. Whether striding across mountains or pedalling her bike at breakneck speed across town, whether diving into the local pool or practising her tai chi moves, she's a reminder of how nice it would be to be fit... And it's funny (a rare quality in an environmental movie...) There's the phones-in-the-freezer riff when Halla and her government aide talk after choir practice; there's the thing about "cousins" (which reminded me of the Isle of Man, as did the sheep farmer's ability to immediately "place" Halla after the briefest exchange of information); there's the hapless Latino tourist who keeps getting arrested in Halla's stead (although he admittedly wouldn't have found that funny, and we can probably only laugh if we've not been subjected to racism in our lives).

There were a couple of things I wasn't sure about, however. A whole new plot dimension opens up when we find out that Halla wants to adopt a Ukrainian orphan. I see that this colours in another facet of her character (bold ecowarrior who still longs to be a mother) and I understand how the parallels offer interesting choices (how can you best save the world?). But it seems odd that such an aware woman as Halla would not be conscious of the debate surrounding transnational adoption.

I'm not sure we need suspect her of cultural appropriation, as Susanne Fuchs does, on account of her choice of heroes, but Fuchs also articulates a question I had about her sister's blithe determination to treat prison as a meditation retreat, which seems to trivialize the reality of prison as experienced by the vast majority of the world's inmates.

I don't know... Maybe there'd be no comedy at all if we were continually self-searching and looking over our shoulder.

The other interesting feature that most critics seemed to love, but I wasn't sure about, was the musicians -- a trio of men with sousaphone, drums, and various keyboards, and a comparable trio of Ukrainian women a-capella singers -- who regularly break the fourth wall to accompany the various representations of Halla's life. Mark Kermode sees them as "a kind of Greek chorus, mediating between the action and the audience ... [and]  dramatising the different elements of our heroine’s divided soul". This does line up with the movie's "mythic feel, incorporating fable-like elements casting Halla as Artemis, Greek goddess of the wilderness". But for me, it was just that bit too weird.

All in all, though, a good watch. There's apparently going to be an American remake, starring and directed by Jodie Foster. I think I'll be sticking with the original...