A whole lot of machine guns, a tank, a pick up truck, an empty bus. Men running, with very little dialogue. Death, casualties and destruction. And the eerie thought that even though these men fighting are the good guys, it looks an awful lot like they aren’t. Because the narrative in the West has taught us they aren’t. Whether that’s true or not, it’s up to each of us to decide. And the best way we can do that is to inform ourselves and watch as much as possible — and that includes this film I’m going to tell you about.
We have been desensitized to scenes of war, by the video games we’ve played, the images of people injured and dying on TV and violent movies. Of this I'm as sure as I am woman.
However, there are still works of art able to cut through that lack of immediate empathy by placing before us the unthinkable. Heba Khaled’s short film ‘People of the Wasteland’ is one such masterpiece of possibilities.
That said, this short — and I mean short, it’s less than twenty minutes beginning to end — film, produced by Talal Derki, the Syrian award-winning filmmaker who also happens to be Khaled’s husband, does present the viewer with a series of questions.
The first question I kept asking myself, perhaps out of personal ignorance, is when does a filmmaker become a director and when is she, Khaled, simply a narrator? More like the script writer for a story already told by those who actually filmed the footage, I mean. That’s question one. You’ll need to watch ‘People of the Wasteland’ to decide for yourself.
Question two has to do with how eerily like the behind the scenes footage of an ISIS video this footage actually feels. Men posing in front of the camera saying things like “now take a still photo of him,” pointing to a fighter and “hold the bottle that way, both of you,” which add a level of surrealism to footage that should appear real. But then, in the last few days, since watching the film, I’ve noticed men on the street in Iraq, revolting in their latest bout of dissatisfactions for their government. Some of them wear these bandages around their heads, arms or necks and roam around out of control. When the cameras from various news organizations turn on them, they limp, hold their heads like they’ve been freshly wounded, cry out in agony. Welcome to the wars in the age of social media age, when everyone — even those revolting for serious issues — act like they’re in an Instagram story.
These questions asked, no one can deny that Syria has turned into a complete wasteland. It’s impossible to imagine a worse case scenario and a more desolate, horrible outcome. Those images of shattered towns and dusty people, men fighting for something, we’re all not quite sure what… It’s nothing we haven’t seen before on the news of course. A complete and utter disaster of grandiose proportions. But it begs to ask, what can be done now? And can that be solution be found with a film?
Well, part of the answer is yes. The Syrian-born Khaled knows that, in the chaos of war, the lines between right and wrong often become blurred. “This rare Go-Pro footage from inside war aims to remind us that in a territory where the landscape and the people are ephemeral because of war, only the camera can remain alive, and only the image of a certain moment can remain eternal,” says her press release. So the camera will outlive us all. And that footage might teach future generation about the perils of war, like we now watch endless hours of Nazi horrors and don’t repeat those mistakes… Or do we!
Finally, just who are the men in the film? The same press release explains, “the film is a trip inside the heart and front line of the war in Syria. As the film’s viewer, the audience becomes the character. The fighters were mostly Jihadists who were working under the command of Turkey’s President Erdoğan. About 80% or possibly all of these fighters were killed in the war. They were fighting against the Kurds as well as against the Syrian army, but the film keeps their background and affiliations vague. “ So here we are indeed inside the headlines, once again proving that cinema can be a better learning tool than the news. I certainly won’t walk away from Khaled’s work the same as when I approached it, I’ll say that much.
The filmmaker herself does have it right when she writes, “My film is a statement against the war and the violence and asks the question, ‘why do we kill?’ It’s the global idea that in war itself, you are both the murderer and the victim. There is no holy war. All wars are the same.”
Words to live by. And a film to learn by.