War Movies: What Are They Good For?

For nearly as long as we’ve been waging war, we’ve sought ways to chronicle it. “Warfare,” a new movie co-directed by the filmmaker Alex Garland and the former Navy SEAL Ray Mendoza, takes an unorthodox approach, recreating a disastrous real-life mission in Iraq according to Mendoza’s own memories and those of the soldiers who fought alongside him. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss how “Warfare” ’s visceral account brings us closer to a certain kind of truth, while also creating a space into which viewers can project their own ideologies. The hosts consider how artists have historically portrayed conflict and its aftermath—referencing Virginia Woolf’s depiction of a shell-shocked soldier in “Mrs. Dalloway” and Vietnam-era classics such as “Apocalypse Now” and “Full Metal Jacket”—and how “Warfare,” with its emphasis on firsthand experience, marks a departure from much of what came before. “That personal tinge to me seems to be characteristic of the age,” Cunningham says. “Part of the emotional appeal is, This happened, and I’m telling you. It’s not diaristic—but it is testimonial.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“Warfare” (2025)
“Apocalypse Now” (1979)
“Full Metal Jacket” (1987)
“Beau Travail” (1999)
“Saving Private Ryan” (1998)
“The Hurt Locker” (2008)
“Zero Dark Thirty” (2012)
“Barry” (2018–23)
“Mrs. Dalloway,” by Virginia Woolf
“In Flanders Fields,” by John McCrae

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