Why War

For as long as there have been humans, there’s been war. Despite the untold death, destruction, and horrors that have been caused as a direct result of the millennia of conflicts, war continues to be a prominent part of civilisation. In Israeli filmmaker Amos Gitai’s Why War, they explore why this is the case. Inspired by letters between Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud on the subject, Gitai touches upon several intriguing ideas spanning gender, patriotism, power, culture as he digs through these grand philosophical questions. While Gitai’s essay-like approach to the topic is conceptually rich, the execution is muddled and often too abstract in design to pin down what the filmmaker is trying to say.

Despite this film’s grand questions, Why War is a tiny production comprised of a handful of actors who often deliver long monologues to the camera. With usually no more than two characters onscreen at once, watching this film often feels like attending a theatre performance. The feature even opens with an orchestral overture and there’s scenes of the actors putting on their costumes to complete the illusion.  By taking grand ideas and scaling them down, Gitai makes engaging with them a more personal experience, as if the viewer were sitting in the room with the actors portraying Einstein and Freud.

For this small production to grapple with the grand ideas being posed, the filmmaker deploys an abstract cinematic language to illustrate what’s being discussed. The trouble, though, is that any meaning behind the imagery is often too experimental in design for any meaning to be gleamed from them. In one scene, for example, a woman wakes on a beach covered in a white veil. As Freud and Einstein look on, she gets up, strips naked, and walks into the ocean never to be seen again as the sound of war rages unseen. In another, a woman dyes her hair only for the dye to become literal blood on her hands. Although these images are bold and visually striking, it’s impossible to discern what Gitai is aiming to achieve with them.

Why War seeks to explore age old questions that the greatest minds in history have pondered. While Gitai’s intellectual expedition into this area doesn’t lack in ambition, it’s ultimately let down by an incomprehensible cinematic language that will leave viewers more puzzled than enlightened.

Andrew Murray

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