V FOR VIOLENCE

Just watched three movies recently, each with very different approaches in their depiction of violence.

ROBOCOP (1987)

[After an employee has been mistakenly gunned down during boardroomdemo of new product ED-209]

CEO: Dick, I'm very disappointed.

When I first saw this in high school, the movie created quite a stir with its over-the-top violence and introduced to a mass audience an exciting new director, Paul Verhoeven, who went on to an illustrious career in Hollywood with such memorable gems as TOTALL RECALL, BASIC INSTINCT, and the much derided SHOWGIRLS (which I actually liked). A classic '80s action flick with plenty of explosions, car chases, well-done stop-action effects, and the obligatory sniffing-coke-from-between-hooker's-boobs scene. We got the unrated director's cut this time, and were treated to extra special camera angles of various moments of carnage. The violence is ridiculously excessive, and paired with an almost gleeful undertone, which effectively removes any sense of horror or emotional fallout from the death and destruction on display. People get shot in the privates, thrown onto the path of speeding vehicles, driven into giant vats of toxic waste transforming them instantly into mutants, and it's all part of the fun. Violence as pure spectacle.

WALTZ WITH BASHIR (2008)

[From atop a tank en route to enemy territory]

SOLDIER #1: What to do? What to do? Why don't you tell us what to do?

SOLDIER #2: Shoot!

SOLDIER #1: On who?

SOLDIER #2: How should I know? Just shoot!

An animated documentary about the director's search to recover his lost memories as a soldier in the Israeli army during the 1982 Lebanon War. Ari Folman speaks with former comrades, a trauma psychologist, and a journalist who covered the war in his attempt to reconstruct his past. The interview testimonies are transformed into a series of vignettes using Flash and hand animation.

In the scene quoted above, Folman recalls being on patrol in a tank, having just arrived in the city of Beirut. He and his fellow soldiers, mostly young men barely out of their teens, are randomly shooting in every direction, with no sense of understanding or purpose. It captures the filmmaker's view towards war in general as completely useless and pointless. In the commentary track, Folman criticizes other recent films such as BAND OF BROTHERS purporting to be anti-war, yet at the same time glorifying the heroism and patriotism of the soldiers. The soldiers in WALTZ are not paragons of loyalty or exalted individuals, but scared young men just trying not to get killed. Folman himself at the time was 19 years old, his mind occupied with being recently dumped by his girlfriend, smoking pot, and listening to 80's synthesizer bands. An ordinary young man, who happened to be thrust into the extraordinary experience of war.

The film unfolds in surreal vignettes, memories floating by in a stream of dreamlike images. It's easy to be seduced by the beautiful visuals and hypnotic rhythms of this gently hallucinogenic film.

The story eventually builds up to a moment in which the Israeli army is ordered to secure two refugee camps of Palestinians. Unbeknownst to Folman and his comrades, the camps soon turn into a massive massacre as another militant faction enters the area and begins slaughtering with gruesome abandon. 

At this point, the film suddenly cuts to archival news footage of the actual massacre. It is an unexpectedly jarring moment that effectively thrusts the viewer out of the ethereal embrace of animated lines and colors into the stark horror of the real incident. Bodies riddled with bullet wounds, a woman sobbing hysterically, the hair of a child's head protruding from beneath a pile of rubble. The slaughter at the refugee camps  lasted over two days and left up to 3500 dead, becoming a dark stain on the national Israeli conscious, as their military had been in charge of controlling the area. It's a shocking and disturbing ending, yet also perhaps a cathartic one, for Folman and for us all, to come to terms with the terrible things in our past.

ELEPHANT (2003)

[Gunman to two students cornered in cafeteria storeroom]

Eenie, meenie, miney, moe…

ELEPHANT follows a day in the life of an ordinary high school which ultimately becomes the site of a mass shooting. Loosely based on the Columbine High School incident, the film uses non-professional actors and hand-held cameras, contributing to its realistic, documentary-style depiction.

The story unwinds in slow, meandering takes, banal and superficial, much like high school itself. Students sit listlessly listening to lectures, gossip in the hallways, meet together for lunch, jog around the track for P.E. Popular girls get invited on dates, a teacher admonishes a boy for being tardy, a jock throws a spitball at a loner in the corner. The camera follows behind silently, focusing on one student at a time as they go through their day. There's nothing remarkable about any of the characters or actions, which makes what is about to happen all the more horrifying.

The scene in which two students plot the shooting is depicted in the same languid, unobtrusive way. But here, their actions take on hugely dramatic significance, ordering ammo over the internet, signing for a package that comes in the mail, practicing their aim in the garage. The tension increasingly builds between the mundane manner in which the scene is shown and the heightened anticipation of its consequences.

The violence that eventually erupts is treated in the same way. Unlike the spectacular effects and excessive gore of ROBOCOP, or the artfully rendered visuals of WALTZ, this is just cold, unadorned footage of random, senseless shots. The gunmen carry out their killings in the same detached manner in which the director shoots the scene. Their faces are strangely blank and devoid of emotion. One uncovers two classmates hiding in the cafeteria, and begins reciting a nursery rhyme to decide which one to kill first. There's something especially disturbing about this, the calmness with which he plays with their fates, the spartan manner in which the scene is shown, that stays with you long after the film ends.