The road to hell is paved with them Elbanowska shows the grotesque and absurd in a distorting mirror. War is hell, and no one needs to be reminded of that in 2024. Behind our eastern border, Ukraine is burning, while the Gaza Strip is turning into a place where the real beginning of World War III may come. The specter of war has not been so close and tangible for decades. Since even the pacifist Scandinavians are already “full metal jackets” (armed to the teeth), it means that the belligerent spirit of the pacifists must be in retreat.
Is? Hold my beer – says Elbanowska and she is making a film that could have been made in the era of universal happiness, when our children watched the war on screens, played Call Of Duty, and we played “Saving Private Ryan” or picked up the pad ourselves to feel forgotten thrill. However, the war has come to us and is a spoiler, proving that it is only in its initial phase.
Elbanowska takes on paramilitary groups in her satirical fork, which is joined against his will by Tytus, a nerd who is completely unsuited to the machismo culture (Michał Sikorski). During the forest survival, he begins to feel fond of the only girl in the group, Natalia (Kinga Jasik) and it is for this reason that he accepts blows from the Leader on his chest, as fragile as Allen's heroes (Piotr Ligienza) and the rest of the company playing war under the baton of Colonel Witkowski (Juliusz Chrząstowski) a cheerful bunch of krinj urchins dressed as Jessie Plemons from “Civil War”. Or not.
These are kids who are aware of the history of cinema, since one of them even has the nickname Rambo! The Tytus Yossarian that our cinema can afford experiences further grotesque attempts to make him a tough guy. Eventually, they all come across a group of mysterious naked women in the forest who, in between meditating and hugging trees, laugh at men's games of war. I was looking for Yoko Ono with an Imagine sticker among them, but racial parity was not preserved in this forest.
I do not blame Elbanowska and her co-writer Łukasz Czapski for mocking militarism during the war that is approaching us, when any manifestation of the desire to defend one's home against an invader should be desirable. After all, Kubrick shot his exceptionally sharp masterpiece about nuclear war a year after the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the world was actually on the brink of nuclear annihilation. Such cinema can be cathartic, as long as it is intelligent and puts forward bold theses.
The problem is that “If You Want Peace, Prepare for War” has none of the original thought and insight that should characterize anti-war satire. I'm not assessing the level of humor itself, because perhaps the audience will like the over-the-top slapstick and cabaret acting, but I do expect any diagnosis of the mocked reality in the case of such cinema. The theater of inflated barracks testosterone rolled out on the training ground was brilliantly depicted, of course!, by Kubrick in “Full Metal Jacket”. Munk, however, clearly stripped the mythology of the war heroism that is sacred in our country.
Elbanowska, however, has one thing to say – toxic masculinity is bad, and playing war is its self-destructive emanation. Poles, however, still enjoy embarrassing military reconstructions, which are especially popular in the provinces, where even the mayor rides on horseback in a suit, and patriarchy has the face of a mustachioed Janusz in a uniform. Well, have fun, which should have a subtitle – YOU HAVE Paragraph Zero.
4/10
“If you want peace, prepare for war”, dir. Agnieszka Elbanowska, Poland 2023.