Release date (UK) – 8th April 2011
Certificate (UK) – TBC
Country – Denmark/Afghanistan
Runtime – 100 minutes
Director – Janus Metz
Janus Metz’s feature length documentary debut Armadillo was launched at the Cannes film festival in 2010 where it won the prestigious Grand Prix de la Semaine de la Critique. It certainly has a lot to live up to — not least because of the media storm the film first caused when it was originally shown, leading to the launch of an official investigation into the events witnessed towards the film’s end.
The film follows a group of young Danish soldiers on their first tour of Afghanistan, where they are based in the Helmand frontline camp Armadillo. As the tale progresses the youthful, cocky young troopers soon learn the harsh realities of war, as injuries and deaths start to hit home. They must all the while support each other in the field as they each seek to pass their own ‘rite of passage’ and make contact with the enemy.
While the film has certainly received many plaudits for its approach, it’s certainly not without its faults. While the film purports to be a documentary, it seems to be shot in a way that doesn’t always lend itself to such a claim. Indeed some film goers might well be tempted to think at certain stages that they’re not watching a documentary at all, and are indeed watching a work of fiction.
Metz certainly seems to want us to fall on the anti-war side of the Afghan-war fence. For example we have poor Afghans getting blown to pieces by artillery fire, losing their houses and homes. However on the other hand we have the seemingly unprofessional, uncaring soldiers who are out for blood and nothing more. The work of an unbiased documentary maker? What makes this notion of bias even more confusing however is that while you get the sense that Metz is trying to make a film that is in its own way, anti-war, at the same time he does at least make some efforts to defend the soldiers’ actions during the engagement with the Taliban towards the end of the piece.
What we have then is a film that asks th
e viewer to try and make up their own mind. Given the material presented before us, my own overriding feeling with the film was that more than anything it’s trying to present a notion of war as something no one can completely understand. The confusion and conflicting messages are in a sense, part of the film-maker’s ‘vision’.
Armadillo is then, a film left specifically open to interpretation. While it doesn’t quite conjure up the same level of feeling as the work of a fictional piece, like The Hurt Locker did in its telling of a modern-day war story, it triumphs in so many other ways, and leaves one questioning one’s own attitude towards war, and whether like the Danish soldiers, you would very likely do exactly as they did. Certainly a film to make you think.
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