Kentucky Press
The question most asked about my latest book, War on the Silver Screen: is that really a war movie? I included Casablanca as a war movie though few shots are fired and battle scenes are entirely absent, and The Manchurian Candidate, which mostly takes place after the end of the Korean War. I argue that both films deal with the consequences of war, the personal choices that confront individuals (Casablanca) or the potential for psychological or social manipulation (Manchurian Candidate).
The editor of The Philosophy of War Films (published by University Press of Kentucky) might agree with these choices, but in other respects, our ideas differ on what constitutes a war film. In his introduction, David LaRocca cites The Lives of Others as a war movie; yes, it takes place during the Cold War (is any film set between 1946-1989 a war film?) and deals with human conflict (so does Whiplash). Where’s the war? LaRocca also includes The King’s Speech, which ends as World War II begins, but is really about one man’s triumph over personal affliction; and Argo, about geo-political turmoil that fortunately fell short of war. If one of philosophy’s tasks is drawing careful definitions, some of these choices seem decidedly unphilosophical.
Despite the almost meaningless scope LaRocca proposes for his subject, he makes many insightful observations, especially over the relation between the truth of war and the images of war on screen. It’s all fiction to some degree, but with what level of veracity? War films—movies of all kinds—are “as real, as verifiable, as true as a dream or a nightmare,” La Rocca writes. “Film is a forum for negotiation, not a fixed document; it is art, not history.”
There were many stimulating points made by the other essayists that contributed to The Philosophy of War Films. Some good thoughts are embedded in dense, hard-to-penetrate prose; other essays are lucidly written—their authors determined to communicate their ideas beyond the sterile precincts of academic conferences. In “War Pictures,” Garrett Stewart investigates the conversion of war movies from heroic epics into glorified surveillance videos (with reminders that media technology has often been driven by military R&D). The book was published before American Sniper, but his point remains apt; it’s a slow read but worth the effort. Inger S.B. Brodey’s “The Power of Memory” is actually enjoyable as prose as well as its fascinating comparison of post-World War II films by John Ford and Akira Kurosawa. The similarities between cowboys and ronin as nostalgic symbols of a pre-industrial commercialized world are remarkable.
