Review: MIFF reviews: Armadillo, Silent Sonata
Armadillo — dir. Janus Metz
“There is a brief inkling that the mission in the Sinai is concerned with peacekeeping, that there is perhaps some larger purpose for it all, but in this film larger purposes shrink away, leaving us with a residue of meaningless ritual.”
—Errol Morris on Frederick Wiseman’s Sinai
An observational-style documentary in the vein of Frederick Wiseman, Armadillo follows a group of young Danish soldiers on their first tour of duty in Afghanistan, where they will serve for six-months stationed at the NATO military compound from which the film derives its name. It is the first time any of them have ever experienced war. As the film unfolds, we are permitted to observe in a very intimate fashion the cold and crude processes of rationalization and detachment that the soldiers must inevitably submit to and internalize in order to not only justify to themselves the value of their chosen duty in the face of possible death but, in some cases, to go on living with themselves.
Several scenes in the film observe the soldiers casually trying to impart clichéd rationalizations for their participation in the war to the civilians on whose farmlands they are fighting. In a manner at once friendly and condescending, they attempt to reassure them of the worth of their cause and the good they intend to bring, apologizing and doling out cash compensation for any civilian destruction they caused. They are adamant that the war in this territory must inevitably end in their victory and that somehow all will turn out to have been worthwhile. The fact that the soldiers seem to possess only a vague, angular ability to articulate (and perhaps comprehend) the case for war and their exact purpose in the region, or else are indifferent to any such scheme, is irrelevant. Any justification beyond the fact that they are there and have orders to oblige becomes merely hearsay, to be evoked in the fleeting moments it is demanded or asked for. Everything else for the soldiers is a matter of duty, filtered through the mind-numbing regime of routine, ritual and cliché that is “just taking orders”.
At the heart of the film occurs a short sequence in which a soldier in charge of shelling confesses to harbouring a feeling of personal guilt over the death of a civilian child. The child has been killed in a recent grenade attack carried out under his express orders. He describes his encounter with the maimed and dying child, explaining that despite all his training and anticipation going into the war, he was ultimately unprepared to deal with the intensity of his own reaction to the terrible reality of having a hand in such an experience. The soldier seeks the counsel of his peers who offer consolation by telling him, somewhat predictably, that it is not actually his fault, that he was just doing his job, that it was a mistake, that such mistakes are unintentional and inevitable, that all responsibility ultimately falls upon command, that command runs a justified campaign, that these justifications pardon all instances of collateral damage. This reasoning is certainly sufficient to absolve the soldier of incriminating guilt under the law of his government. But whether it has been sufficient to purge entirely the feeling of guilt, the nagging conscience and violent memories that the soldier must bear, as well as the doubt it betrays about his exploitation in such a war, is left unresolved. —Alifeleti Brown
Silent Sonata — dir. Janez Burger
Often, the motivation behind setting a film in an unknown country is to present a theme or motif that is deemed universal. In Denis Villeneuve’s recent Incendies for example, the horrors of war are explored through the guise of Greek tragedy. There is no specific reference to time and place in Janez Burger’s Silent Sonata, a magical realist film that focuses on the transition from life to death. Its idea of the lieu vague stresses a kind of universal humanism. The film opens with a quotation from Walt Whitman’s poem “Song of Myself,” advocating the notion of a universal transcendent identity in which body and soul are conceived as one: “I know I have the best of time and space, and was never measured and never will be measured.” The poem provides a contextual framework for the film as it continually fluctuates between the stark realities of life in the midst of war and a kind of vibrant youthfulness.
Aesthetically, the manifestation of life and death is called forth by the use of colour. Monochrome colours dominate the film’s opening section in which a man stumbles across the body of his dead wife in a desolate war-ravaged landscape. Vibrant colours dominate when a travelling circus arrives to relieve the mourning. The circus folk offer the family some respite but the playful escapism that the circus offers is transient. Even they are incapable of warding off the destructive forces of war that loom in the background. The setting of Silent Sonata suggests a critique of the horrors of war but the film is much more about the universal passage from life to death. Although, whereas the subject of Whitman’s poem is given the opportunity to transcend life through endless renewal, the characters of Silent Sonata are unable to conquer their own mortality.
The absence of dialogue in Silent Sonata does not hinder the capacity for the actors to achieve an emotional density, and it is interesting to note just how much narrative can be built by the use of ambient noises alone. But there is something lacking in this film that impedes on some of its unique achievements. Maybe it is just that there is not enough strength in the overall execution. The majestic qualities start to wane after a while and you begin to wonder whether or not the circus will actually put on a show at all. When they finally do, the performance is not quite as magical as one would expect. Perhaps this is intentional. Even though the circus offers an escape for the family, their performance is ephemeral. Whatever the case may be, don’t expect to see a Slovenian take on Pan’s Labyrinth. —Fiona Shewan
