According to author Carl von Clausewitz (“On War”) one starts a war by being “clear in his mind what he intends to achieve […] and how intends to conduct it.”. However, when you look at the current state of the world and the wars going on at the moment, it is sometimes hard to find the purpose for them, especially with the amount of casualties and infrastructural damage being caused. Many stories and features have done their best to tackle the most difficult question of the purpose of war and what it tells us about the human condition. Kyrgyz director Amanbek Azhymat deals with these issues in his short feature “Warrior”, which connects present conflicts and the overall idea of the soldier to how it was in past conflicts ranging back thousands of years.
Warrior screened at Busan International Short Film Festival
A sniper (Zhenishbek Kangeldiev) is on a battlefield. He has been successful fending off the enemy soldier thus far, but with many of them closing in on him, his situation becomes somewhat desperate, until he is suddenly hit by a shot and falls unconscious. As he wakes up, he finds himself in a desert, not the place he was expecting and most certainly not where the battle took place. He is also surrounded by strange looking people, one dressed in an old WW2-uniform and one only wearing what seems like an animal fur. The four men tell him he has died from his wound, and as he tries to come to terms with his new situation, they also contemplate on the nature of war in general and the conflicts they have taken part in.
One of the more pessimistic, but nevertheless correct observations about human existence is the prevalence of conflicts. War brings change, as Clausewitz states, and has therefore a purpose, while at the same time it comes with a huge price. In Azhymat's feature this truth is dealt through two aspects, the characters and the idea of the kind of purgatory they are in now, which also is the setting for the majority of the feature. It is a barren wasteland serving as the kind of image your might have of purgatory, while at the same time highlighting the outcome of all of the wars, an empty landscape with not people and not vegetation, with only the lost souls of fallen soldiers inhabiting the space. Azhymat's use of setting seems to hint at the absurdity of violent conflict, the toll it takes on our home and ourselves.
Through the conversations of the soldiers, this aspect is highlighted even further. As the sniper proudly presents his weapon as the epitome of war technology, and the other soldiers admiring its range and fire power, its absurd nature could not be more obvious. What is eye-opening or perhaps provocative for the viewer remains a confirmation for the characters, and their stance on war, as a denial of a war's purpose would make their death ultimately pointless. Perhaps it is indeed hell Azhymat shows in this insightful short feature, because we see an absurd reality and our failure to acknowledge it.
“Warrior” is a contemplative and provocative feature about the absurd nature of war. Through its use of setting and a cleverly written script, Amanbek Azhymat manages to cover a lot of ground, resulting in a feature just as powerful as some of the best films on the same subject.
