Bucknell Film/Media Screenings at The Campus Theatre

 20 Days in Mariupol

The Aesthetics of War

For two weeks in a row, the Campus Theatre screened the past two Oscar-winning documentaries as part of Bucknell’s Tuesday Film Series. One (No Other Land) details the settler destruction of the West Bank, and was reviewed in the previous Bucknellian; the other documents the first days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and is reviewed below. When the theater lights went out and the movie started, the audience was met with a dystopian landscape, both a reality of the war and a chilling prophecy. The eastern bloc architecture of Mariupol, ravaged by missiles and tanks, was succumbing to the ashy sky, while the last patches of snow on the ground were coming together with the landscape to warn us of a renewed fear of the nuclear winter. 20 Days in Mariupol, produced by the Associated Press and PBS’s Frontline, tells the story of a team of journalists who filmed the invasion of Mariupol and attempted to send the footage to the West to garner support for the cause. When talking to one of my professors who attended the screening that Tuesday evening, she told me she actually remembered seeing those scenes of despair back in 2022 on television when the journalists managed to get the footage out. Given the knowledge of three years of the merciless war and invasion that followed, moments like these contrast the film’s claims that “if the world saw what happened in Mariupol, it would give meaning to the horror.” 20 Days in Mariupol, as the title suggests, takes place over the course of 20 days in which the panic and fear of the civilians in the city escalates alongside the military aggression. Director Mstyslav Chernov also takes on the role of the main character, with his footage and voice driving the interviews with the people, as well as  the narration he added after the events. For those from the Eastern European region, the people are more than familiar: their clothes and their mannerisms, their reactions and words, are reminiscent of an entire history and culture which is being crumbled by bullets and shells. The camera films twice through bullet holes in windows, displaying the ruin of the city at large through a smaller microcosm of destruction. Such devices are used throughout the film, where one object or moment is representative of a pattern. When we are shown a shoe laying on the ground, which is a repeated motif, we are taught to know it means not only someone’s death, but also the death of a dream and aspiration. The first time we see such an abandoned shoe, we are told the story of a rocket exploding next to a child playing soccer, blowing both of his legs off.

Twice in the film there are montages, not of the war happening per se, but of the spaces left afterwards: streets, cats, bodies. Groups of children and civilians are juxtaposed with groups of soldiers, and the movement of the missiles flying through the air is compared to birds flying away, possibly to a safe zone – one inaccessible to those trapped in Mariupol. Another repeated shot is the hand that lets sand flow through its fingers, a symbol for both the inevitable passage of time as the situation becomes more dire, and the countless lives lost, lives which slipped through the fingers of the medics unable to keep up with the military aggression. The hospital is where a majority of the film takes place, a space for both refuge and for grief. In one of the film’s most powerful scenes, a baby is born from a dying mother, the baby’s life solely in the hands of the doctors who resuscitate them to health. Besides such bittersweet moments, there are few scenes of beauty in Mariupol. The narrator claims that people in such desperate conditions are brought to a crossroad where it’s either their goodness that comes out, or their ugliness. We see them rush to the stores, ravaging through products to find the bare necessities, throwing blame everywhere for their disparity, and some losing all hope, but it’s hard to condemn their fear.

On two separate occasions, the footage filmed by the AP team escapes the city and reaches international audiences on television and news. We are shown again the scenes we saw prior, with little added commentary or coverage from the news anchors, but with the grainy look of  filmed television, and not with the clarity we had been used to seeing in the film. Later, Russian propaganda is also shown, as it is presented to the Russian people: it claims that the suffering Ukrainian families are nothing but actors portraying victims, poor players who strut and fret their hour upon the silver screen in order to lie and influence the West. The blatant lies are tackled simply by showing them next to the real events, acknowledging the importance of being honest to the people – in such isolated conflicts especially – an act which the other news channels are congratulated for trying to portray, by presenting to us the filmed material. 

At first glance, these repetitions seem tautological, but their ramifications run deeper. The three sequences have an alternate, perhaps unintentional, effect, and that is to tell those watching the film that the rest of the movie they witnessed is neither TV news, nor propaganda, but plain truth–events presented as they are, first-hand information. In an era when we must be most critical about our own representation, such implications in a documentary work must be addressed. From choosing who/what to film, and more importantly how to edit, films and documentaries alike inherently  manipulate “the truth” into subjective perception. The action-movie music chosen to portray the dying hands reaching for the sky in the hospital massacres transforms the suffering of the Ukrainians into a spectacle of pain, and the tribal-like drums warning us of the 20th day in Mariupol have the same showmanship factor. Such choices pair the pain not with anger, or hope (in a more nuanced take on civilian resilience), but with apparent terrified excitement for the audience. The monotone voiceover, in its insistence on “neutrality,” ends up as a somber and tired presenter that borders on an uncaring deity, thus urging the spectator, instead, to take on the task of caring about and supporting the Ukrainian cause. In other words, this film, too, is propagandistic in its own way. This is not, however, a criticism. As British poet J. H. Prynne explains on contradictions in art:

“The active poetic text is thus characteristically in dispute with its own ways and means, contrary implication running inwards to its roots and outwards to its surface proliferations: not as acrobatic display but as working the work that, when fit for purpose, poetry needs to do. These are the proper arguments of poetry as a non-trivial pursuit, the templates for ethical seriousness.”

In art, and media in general, there is no “One size fits all,” and it’s important to understand that each film has a different purpose and a different means of expression. In this case, it’s a plea for help presented by journalists who realize the blindness of the world to what’s not affecting them directly, to what’s far away. They are fighting Russia’s propaganda machine, not with the accuracy of a surgical operation, but with the honesty of a person facing the indifference of war. Not even non-fiction films trying to truthfully (re)present horrific subject matter can be “objective.” Even portrayals of war will necessarily involve aesthetic decisions.

 20 Days in Mariupol

The Aesthetics of War

For two weeks in a row, the Campus Theatre screened the past two Oscar-winning documentaries as part of Bucknell’s Tuesday Film Series. One (No Other Land) details the settler destruction of the West Bank, and was reviewed in the previous Bucknellian; the other documents the first days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and is reviewed below. When the theater lights went out and the movie started, the audience was met with a dystopian landscape, both a reality of the war and a chilling prophecy. The eastern bloc architecture of Mariupol, ravaged by missiles and tanks, was succumbing to the ashy sky, while the last patches of snow on the ground were coming together with the landscape to warn us of a renewed fear of the nuclear winter. 20 Days in Mariupol, produced by the Associated Press and PBS’s Frontline, tells the story of a team of journalists who filmed the invasion of Mariupol and attempted to send the footage to the West to garner support for the cause. When talking to one of my professors who attended the screening that Tuesday evening, she told me she actually remembered seeing those scenes of despair back in 2022 on television when the journalists managed to get the footage out. Given the knowledge of three years of the merciless war and invasion that followed, moments like these contrast the film’s claims that “if the world saw what happened in Mariupol, it would give meaning to the horror.” 20 Days in Mariupol, as the title suggests, takes place over the course of 20 days in which the panic and fear of the civilians in the city escalates alongside the military aggression. Director Mstyslav Chernov also takes on the role of the main character, with his footage and voice driving the interviews with the people, as well as  the narration he added after the events. For those from the Eastern European region, the people are more than familiar: their clothes and their mannerisms, their reactions and words, are reminiscent of an entire history and culture which is being crumbled by bullets and shells. The camera films twice through bullet holes in windows, displaying the ruin of the city at large through a smaller microcosm of destruction. Such devices are used throughout the film, where one object or moment is representative of a pattern. When we are shown a shoe laying on the ground, which is a repeated motif, we are taught to know it means not only someone’s death, but also the death of a dream and aspiration. The first time we see such an abandoned shoe, we are told the story of a rocket exploding next to a child playing soccer, blowing both of his legs off.

Twice in the film there are montages, not of the war happening per se, but of the spaces left afterwards: streets, cats, bodies. Groups of children and civilians are juxtaposed with groups of soldiers, and the movement of the missiles flying through the air is compared to birds flying away, possibly to a safe zone – one inaccessible to those trapped in Mariupol. Another repeated shot is the hand that lets sand flow through its fingers, a symbol for both the inevitable passage of time as the situation becomes more dire, and the countless lives lost, lives which slipped through the fingers of the medics unable to keep up with the military aggression. The hospital is where a majority of the film takes place, a space for both refuge and for grief. In one of the film’s most powerful scenes, a baby is born from a dying mother, the baby’s life solely in the hands of the doctors who resuscitate them to health. Besides such bittersweet moments, there are few scenes of beauty in Mariupol. The narrator claims that people in such desperate conditions are brought to a crossroad where it’s either their goodness that comes out, or their ugliness. We see them rush to the stores, ravaging through products to find the bare necessities, throwing blame everywhere for their disparity, and some losing all hope, but it’s hard to condemn their fear.

On two separate occasions, the footage filmed by the AP team escapes the city and reaches international audiences on television and news. We are shown again the scenes we saw prior, with little added commentary or coverage from the news anchors, but with the grainy look of  filmed television, and not with the clarity we had been used to seeing in the film. Later, Russian propaganda is also shown, as it is presented to the Russian people: it claims that the suffering Ukrainian families are nothing but actors portraying victims, poor players who strut and fret their hour upon the silver screen in order to lie and influence the West. The blatant lies are tackled simply by showing them next to the real events, acknowledging the importance of being honest to the people – in such isolated conflicts especially – an act which the other news channels are congratulated for trying to portray, by presenting to us the filmed material. 

At first glance, these repetitions seem tautological, but their ramifications run deeper. The three sequences have an alternate, perhaps unintentional, effect, and that is to tell those watching the film that the rest of the movie they witnessed is neither TV news, nor propaganda, but plain truth–events presented as they are, first-hand information. In an era when we must be most critical about our own representation, such implications in a documentary work must be addressed. From choosing who/what to film, and more importantly how to edit, films and documentaries alike inherently  manipulate “the truth” into subjective perception. The action-movie music chosen to portray the dying hands reaching for the sky in the hospital massacres transforms the suffering of the Ukrainians into a spectacle of pain, and the tribal-like drums warning us of the 20th day in Mariupol have the same showmanship factor. Such choices pair the pain not with anger, or hope (in a more nuanced take on civilian resilience), but with apparent terrified excitement for the audience. The monotone voiceover, in its insistence on “neutrality,” ends up as a somber and tired presenter that borders on an uncaring deity, thus urging the spectator, instead, to take on the task of caring about and supporting the Ukrainian cause. In other words, this film, too, is propagandistic in its own way. This is not, however, a criticism. As British poet J. H. Prynne explains on contradictions in art:

“The active poetic text is thus characteristically in dispute with its own ways and means, contrary implication running inwards to its roots and outwards to its surface proliferations: not as acrobatic display but as working the work that, when fit for purpose, poetry needs to do. These are the proper arguments of poetry as a non-trivial pursuit, the templates for ethical seriousness.”

In art, and media in general, there is no “One size fits all,” and it’s important to understand that each film has a different purpose and a different means of expression. In this case, it’s a plea for help presented by journalists who realize the blindness of the world to what’s not affecting them directly, to what’s far away. They are fighting Russia’s propaganda machine, not with the accuracy of a surgical operation, but with the honesty of a person facing the indifference of war. Not even non-fiction films trying to truthfully (re)present horrific subject matter can be “objective.” Even portrayals of war will necessarily involve aesthetic decisions.