Soldiers struggle to connect with civilians in this Oscar-nominated film.
A War, writer and director Tobias Lindholm’s gripping film about violent events in Afghanistan, is part combat thriller, part legal drama. The film centers on a group of soldiers from Denmark, which participated in NATO’s Afghanistan intervention from the beginning, in 2001. A War was a finalist for this year’s Foreign Language Film Oscar.
When the soldiers and their commander, Claus (Pilou Asbæk), look at Afghans, they often do so through lenses of one kind or another: binoculars, rifle scopes, the cameras they use to document carnage. This may have a distancing effect. Certainly the soldiers operate at a remove from the civilians they’re protecting, and that could explain the lethal choice Claus makes at a critical moment.
As the film begins, soldiers are on patrol in an Afghan province, and Claus monitors them via radio. One is killed in an attack. This is a brutally gory scene, and shaky handheld cameras capture it and other combat sequences with documentary urgency. Afterward, Claus’ men are shaken, and he announces that he will begin accompanying them on patrols.
Meanwhile, in Denmark, Claus’ wife, Maria (Tuva Novotny), raises their three young children. She’s a doting mother, and we see her lose patience only once, when the middle child misbehaves. A boy of about 8, he seems to be acting out because of the strain caused by his father’s absence. The family members desperately want to be together again, and after a medical emergency involving the youngest child, Maria breaks down.
Communications between the soldiers and their loved ones are difficult. Claus talks to his family in static-filled phone calls that sometimes are dropped and sometimes don’t happen as scheduled. In a video message, an injured soldier greets his comrades in Afghanistan by flipping through a series of cards. That scene, at once funny and wrenching, is a good example of the emotional complexity Lindholm finds in this material.
The soldiers likewise have trouble communicating with Afghan civilians. Mediated by interpreters, their conversations are emotional and confusing, and Claus struggles to connect. The civilians’ wellbeing is the reason the soldiers are there, as Claus says at a briefing, but civilians and combatants aren’t easy to tell apart in this phase of the conflict, when people detonating roadside bombs do so remotely, invisibly.
The drama hangs on a quick decision Claus makes during a firefight. Desperate to evacuate a wounded soldier, he orders deadly airstrikes on a structure that, it turns out, houses civilians, including children. He is charged with war crimes and sent home to Denmark for the trial. Claus is relieved to be back, even as he agonizes over his decision and the court proceeding.
In a scene near the end, Claus’ oldest child, an adolescent girl, asks him whether it’s true that he killed children. This is heartbreaking. Claus has come home and is now able to meet an essential parental commitment: being present for his children. But now he struggles with meeting another one: being honest with them.
