Big news on the South by Southwest front: On Tuesday, SXSW Music released a new round of artists for the 2017 festival, including a high-profile keynote speaker.
Acclaimed musician and producer Nile Rodgers will give what is sure to be a riveting keynote presentation next year. The New York native is celebrated for his solo career and his band Chic, as well as his work with David Bowie, Sister Sledge, Pharrell, and more. Rodgers joins Zane Lowe on the list of SXSW Music keynotes. Lee Daniels, Jennifer Doudna, and Jill Soloway have been announced on the Film side.
An additional 200 bands have been tacked onto the growing lineup. Trending talent like Apache, Cherry Galzerr, Temples, Tei Shei, and Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever will play alongside already announced artists like Minus the Bear, The Drums, Girlpool, Diet Cig, King Cayman, San Fermin, and more. Newly announced Austin acts include Quiet Company, Walker Lukens, Calliope Musicals, Residual Kid, and Wood & Wire.
SXSW is divided into three main categories — Music, Film, and Interactive — but badge access will expand in 2017. A Film badge, for example, will provide primary access to all Film programming, as well as secondary access to select Interactive and Music events.
SXSW 2017 takes place March 10-19 around Austin. Badges are on sale now for discounted rates. Get a Music, Film, or Interactive badge for $1,025 and Platinum access for $1,350 through November 18.
At this point in movie history, there are precious few ways to make a war film feel original. Every major American war, including the most recent ones in Iraq and Afghanistan, has been covered, and the “war is hell” idea has been featured in too many films to count. So for a film like the new Warfare to stand out, it needs to do something that other war films have not.
To say that it accomplishes that goal is an understatement. Set in Iraq in 2006, it follows a platoon of soldiers tasked with helping to gain control of the city of Ramadi, a hotbed of activity in the war at that time. But this is not a story of good triumphing over evil, nor one that tries to examine exactly what the U.S. military was trying to accomplish in the war. Instead, it’s just a story of a group of young men trying to do the job they’re asked to do, and what happens to them during that mission.
It presents as fact, with no judgment either way, that one squad of the platoon overtakes the home of two Iraqi families as part of the mission. An ensuing firefight pins the soldiers down with almost no way to escape, and subsequent rescue attempts by other squads result in multiple casualties. The bulk of the film focuses on how the shell-shocked and injured soldiers react to the situation in which they find themselves.
Written and directed by Alex Garland (Civil War) and Ray Mendoza, the film is based on the memories of Mendoza and his fellow soldiers of this exact situation they experienced. As such, the film does not attempt to add extra drama or even emphasize one character over another. In fact, the first 30-40 minutes of the film are relatively boring, as the squad relays information about their position to other, unseen people.
The men in the platoon are not exactly interchangeable with each other, but the way the film is structured, they’re essentially equals. It’s easy to tell who the leaders are, but those giving orders are not treated as more important to the film than those carrying them out. This is especially true when things go to hell, as each person goes from trying to fight to trying to survive, with their training coming into play in different ways.
The situation depicted in the film is somewhat mundane — it’s not some big battle or a turning point in the war — but the intensity with which Garland and Mendoza stage it makes it enormously impactful. They put the audience right in the thick of the carnage, and the horrific injuries inflicted on some of the men, as well as the seemingly never-ending screams of pain emanating from them, can be difficult to take.
The cast features a few actors who are starting to make names for themselves (Will Poulter, Joseph Quinn, Noah Centineo, Charles Melton, Michael Gandolfini), others who’ve had smaller impacts (D’Pharoah Woon-A-Tai, Cosmo Jarvis, Evan Holtzman), and plenty of others who have yet to get their big breaks. Each of them does their job extremely well, which in this case means that they complement each other’s performances, with none of them overshadowing the others.
Warfare is not an overtly political film, and yet the politics of war are inextricable from the story it tells. Neither anti-war nor pro-war, it simply lays out the facts of one individual mission in a larger conflict, and each viewer will likely take away something different from the experience of watching it.
