Alex Garland is keeping things simple when it comes to talking about his new A24 film, Warfare.
The filmmaker, who co-wrote and directed the movie with former U.S. Navy SEAL Ray Mendoza — the 95 minutes all recounted from Mendoza’s memory about a specific 2006 mission in Iraq — wants audiences to know that Warfare has no agenda.
“Everything in the film is sourced from first person account and the film is just attempting to accurately recreate it,” Garland said at the film’s U.K. premiere in London Tuesday night. “That neutral approach, I hope, means people can receive this as adults in their own way with whatever they bring, whatever their opinions are on the Iraq war — it doesn’t matter. This is extra information that they can interpret and take from what they will.”
The ensemble line-up playing real-life soldiers in Warfare includes Charles Melton, Will Poulter, D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Joseph Quinn, Cosmo Jarvis, Kit Connor, Taylor John Smith, Finn Bennett, Noah Centineo and Michael Gandolfini.
Garland continued, saying he thinks that living in a “connected” period of social media has changed how people receive art like movies and television: “[When] you position yourself in the public statement and [say] what you think in relation to what is happening, it reassures the recipients: ‘Yes, we’re on the same side. The choir is being preached to.’”
The Ex Machina and Civil War director added: “It just becomes very problematic because then there are no statements made without an agenda … I find it infantilizing and irritating, and I don’t want to be part of it.” Cinema has a long history with making war “seductive”, he also said, which isn’t “always appropriate.”
Mendoza, before bringing out the cast for a round of applause (sans Quinn, who only last night was unveiled in Las Vegas as one of the Fab Four in Sam Mendes’ Sony Beatles biopics), said the film is partly a gift for Elliot Miller, played by Jarvis in Warfare, who has no memory of the depicted event. “It’s really hard to explain to him, he doesn’t have that core memory,” Mendoza said.
“So over the years, we’ve drawn on maps, we’ve written out in military form… I think I quickly discovered I wanted to do a recreation for him. This is a great format, [so] this visual medium for him would be a great gift,” he added.
Garland and Mendoza’s Warfare hits theaters April 11 in the U.S. and April 18 in the U.K.