Hani Mustafa goes to war War films are among the most popular, drawing in audiences with a range of attractive elements. These include stunning aural and visual effects, especially in battle scenes, as well as displays of various kinds of arms. Such films also require huge budgets to deploy large numbers of extras, orchestrate explosions, and achieve other such feats. Such is the form this genre takes, but its content is equally compelling; for no doubt it is in the nature of war to fertile dramatic material. It is hard to imagine a screenwriter finding it hard to find a profound story with which to drive a war film. The difficulty arises, rather, from the manner in which that story can be drawn out without said screenwriter giving in to a naïve political agenda or a one-sided view of any conflict. Hollywood presented much war to the world since the end of World War II. Directly after the war, Hollywood films -- however atypical -- reflected a change of strategy in the cultural and propaganda politics of the US. During the war America had been in the same camp as the Soviet Union against the Nazis and the Fascists; now it turned against the Communists, seeing them as the number-one enemy. The image of the Red Army confronting the Nazis in the east gradually disappeared altogether from the constitution of the war film -- which glorified various WWII battles. Naturally the new crop -- The Longest Day (1962), for example -- was produced at the zenith of the Cold War, and with three directors making a powerful epic film, it was a hugely costly production. Among the most important war films that proved popular all across the globe and gleaned a bunch of Oscars and Golden Globes at the time was J Lee Thompson's The Guns of Navaron (1961), with Gregory Peck, David Niven, Anthony Quinn, on a commando operation by army irregulars. With few exceptions that sought to present pure cinematic art (Terrence Malick's Golden Bear- winning The Thin Red Line (1999), for example), such films generally took a heroic, self-celebratory stance. Yet this was not to last. War itself eventually altered the views of filmmakers of the homeland, who began to see it as a product manufactured by an administration, not the reflection of national will. The Vietnam War especially generated much confusion among American intellectuals regarding their state meddling in the internal affairs of other states. America began to produce artistic as opposed to propaganda films: Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979), for example. In 1987, likewise, Oliver Stone's Platoon (1986) won not only the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival but also two Oscars for Best Film and Best Director. *** Films that dealt with the 1991 Iraq War, and those that registered the repercussions of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, took a position contrary to that of the American administration at the time. Perhaps the most important of these was Michael Moore's Palm d'Or-winning Fahrenheit 911 (2004). Paul Greengrass's Green Zone (2010) also stands against the war in Iraq. The film opens with an American Army officer in an observation unit assigned to locate weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The officer, named Miller (Matt Damon), having received definite intelligence regarding the presence of a chemical-weapons production unit in the town of Al-Diwaniyyah, is moving towards that position. Following a street-fighting sequence with an Iraqi sniper, the observation soldiers discover that the position they were directed to is in fact a sanitary ware factory. At this point Miller begins to ask the question that is the principal driving force of the entire film: how can there be misinformation coming from the intelligence unit responsible? Miller is reassured of the fact that the intelligence does provide misinformation when, on the next observation mission, the same pattern is repeated. But it is there that he makes the acquaintance of Farid Abdel-Rahman or as the Americans call him Freddy (Khalid Abdalla), an Iraqi young man who lost a leg in the Iraq-Iran war. Freddy coincidentally finds out about the house where Saddam's Baath Party leaders meet informs Miller of their whereabouts. Miller decides to set his observation duties aside and look for the Baathists. When Miller breaks into the house, he garners important information -- as well as a book that specifies the movements of General Mohammad Al-Rawi (Yigal Naor), one of the leaders of the Iraqi Army. Having also found out that the general used to collaborate with American intelligence personnel, Miller starts looking for him -- in the search for an answer to his original question. It soon transpires that a good portion of the American administration, in the quest to conceal information about weapons of mass destruction, is hunting down those who might have genuine information that would uncover the Bush administration's lies concerning the alleged reason behind the invasion. The American invaders, as the viewer begins to realize, are not a single undifferentiated mass: within the forces, there are good guys and bad guys. Like many American conspiracy-theory films, Green Zone thus moves to an internal conflict between two figures within the coalition camp. The first is a high-ranking official in an American intelligence service named Clark Poundstone (Greg Kinnear), while the second is Martin Brown (Brendan Gleeson), a CIA official who specialises in the Middle East. This is in fact the conflict between those who have preconceptions about the Arab world and those with experience there -- a fact that becomes clear at several points in the script, and especially at the point when it is debated whether or not to disband the Iraqi army. Perhaps it is also a hint at two powers within Washington: that which sought out war without any justification, and that which seeks to end the war with the least possible loss. Al-Rawi is the embodiment of the Saddam regime, a fact further established by the casting of the Iraqi-Israeli Naor, who portrayed the defeated dictator himself beautifully in the BBC-produced television serial House of Saddam (2008). Yet the character of Freddy is more essential in the drive to break with the conspiracy- theory formula which would have otherwise made the film run-of-the-mill and unremarkable. This young man who suffered under the Baath regime and its perilous adventures is deeply angry -- and he collaborates with the leaders of the invasion in order to bring about the arrest of Baath leaders. This becomes patently clear in the scene when Freddy kills Al-Rawi against Miller's will. The Egyptian-British actor does a brilliant job of portraying resentment and sorrow, as well as fear of the American Army collaborating with the Baathists. For the third time Abdalla establishes his exceptional ability in such "intercultural" roles, after appearances in United 93 (2006) and Kite Runner (2007). *** War films sometimes reflect a specific viewpoint dictated by higher authorities in the state where the film is produced. This usually results in one-sided, superficial viewpoint. Though meticulously and intelligently written, the story driving Green Zone can seem, from the critic's point of view, to be like the stories of many such films too direct. Does the film convey a message from the new American administration intended to prepare the public for withdrawal from Iraq, or does it simply reflect the prevalent enough viewpoint that the war was unjustified in the first place?
