IT'S weird to watch a war movie at this time when we see real battles in our home front, like the airstrikes in Marawi, killings of drug-users/ narco-politicians and a president going hyperbole threatening to bomb Lumad schools.
But I watched Dunkirk last week, shutting off the deathly dose of Duterte's wars by drowning myself to the movie's deafening and ominous rumble of vintage air bombs, war planes, torpedoes and raging waves.
While Dunkirk a film about a historic moment of war, the typical style of director Christopher Nolan to thread different and disjointed narratives and images on screen somewhat made me reflect on the realities of our present wars.
I was intrigued with the opening scene, where British soldiers walk on an eerily quiet empty street and they scamper just as they are slowly taken out one-by-one by German snipers. Juxtapose that to images of soldiers slowly tracking the bombed empty streets in Marawi, uncertain of sniper fire from suspected 'ISIS'.
The thing that struck me in the movie is that you don't see a German trooper or a pilot. The 'enemy' is invisible, but one knows when they come, in the sound of sniper bullets and the deadening sound fighter planes coming near.
The 'invisible' enemy seems to reflect our state of fear in our world. We never know when bombs will strike in our city. But the military propaganda tells us this is made by 'ISIS' -inspired groups. They tell us they are the enemy as they want to build an "independent caliphate state" threatening everyone in Mindanao. But the question is, do we know the "enemy"? We may not totally understand what a caliphate is, or the history of legitimate Moro struggles, but we are told we have to fight or fear.
And fear is the driving theme in this movie. Soldiers are not seen in heroic gun battles, but rather in stages of retreat, survival, fear and infighting. A commanding officer appears cool in one moment, but later becomes shell-shocked as he is the lone survivor of a shipwreck.
Courage instead is embodied by the civilians, the British citizens who took the cudgels to rescue the soldiers in Dunkirk using their sailboats. In our realities, where Maranaos risk themselves shielding non-Maranaos from the attacks of the Maute group in Marawi, and teachers braving threats from the paramilitary who want to burn Lumad schools.
The ironic ending shows the rescued soldiers greeted like heroes. The young soldiers ask themselves, why, we just want to survive. And the last scene where the soldiers reads aloud Prime Minister Churchill's call to arms, makes me recall how people want to mouth our president's call to kill.
I come out of the movie wondering the truth of the matter of these wars. General Año said the war in Marawi will come to an end, but there’s no news yet of the priest and other hostages, and whether hundred-thousand Marawi residents can return home. The president denied saying he will bomb lumad schools.
I reflect on the lines from another war movie, The Thin Red Line: “What's this war in the heart of nature? Why does nature vie with itself? The land contends with the sea? Is there an avenging power in nature? Not one power, but two?”
(tyvelez@gmail.com)