"The Third War"
We follow Léo (Anthony Bajon), who has just finished his classes. Fresh out of basic training, Leo lands his first assignment as a 'Sentinel'; a surveillance operation that sees him roaming the streets of Paris with nothing to do other than remain alert for potential threats. Given the task of securing the outskirts of a massive anti-government demonstration, Leo finds himself plunged into the heart of a raging crowd. All the frustration, the pressure and impotent fury that had been building up over the weeks is about to explode.
"The Third War" is a political fiction that plunges us into the heart of the sentinel mission. Some years ago, France went to war against terrorism. Following the declaration of a state of emergency in the country, we grew used to encountering soldiers on patrol, machine guns in hand, on the city streets, much as one would actually see in a country at war. To say that we grew used to it's actually something of a lie. Encountering three soldiers in fatigues with assault rifles slung across their chests isn't something you get used to. "The Third War" is the war we may already be fighting unbeknown to us. A new kind of war, no longer a war of positions, but of power. That's to say a war of images. A war that may not be quite a war as we think of it, but a fantasy of war. The tension that drives the film comes from this realization; no one knows exactly what a war looks like. We've all seen images of war. We've seen films about war. We've seen war on the news, but what's the right image of war? This is precisely the point the film drives at. It seems to that an art is never as powerful as when it confronts it's limits and one of the specific limits of cinema is that it's content to mechanically record the appearance of things. That appearance is what's film questions. The characters dressed up as soldiers, they've been taught to act like soldiers, to handle weapons, to respond in war-like situations. Now that we've the soldiers, the question is this; can we resemble a theater of war? By mirroring the growing mistrust of the main character, it's Paris itself that gradually morphs. This is an opportunity to film the city as never before; places filmed a thousand times, everyday spaces that suddenly, by virtue of the gaze we level at them, take on a whole new appearance.
Everything is a matter of appearances, and as seen by a soldier, who moreover grew up outside the capital, Paris turns into a foreign city, hostile and dangerous. Gradually, in the eyes of the character, every street corner comes to harbor a potential terror threat; every car is potentially booby-trapped; every window may hide a sniper. So when the character finds himself in the midst of a violent demonstration, it all comes together: in the end, war manifests itself as we've been taught to see it. Explosions, multiple enemies, projectiles, buildings engulfed in smoke. Suddenly, we resemble what the character imagines a theater of war to be. The images that emerge are perfectly superimposable on the images we've seen of the wars that have fuelled the collective imagination, from Vietnam to Syria. When everything looks like war, isn't Leo entitled to behave like a soldier? "The Third War" is evocative of a long tradition of characters who lose ground, from "Taxi Driver" to "The Conversation" and "Dillinger Is Dead". The challenge here's to stick with the protagonist rather than observe his drift. Ultimately, watching someone who's crazy is not very interesting. What's truly fascinating is to accept, without realizing it, to experience craziness yourself. Madness is all around us, in the city, on television. Just waiting to explode. The character simply reveals what's going on in society. To embrace his drift, we need only awaken the paranoia that lies dormant within us. Like Leo, we end up afraid of a young man playing with an old cell phone, while the police handle a suspicious package. Like Leo, we're wary of a minivan. What's really going on in the patrols? We've to understand the relationships they weave with each other, what they talk about amongst themselves, and perhaps especially how they talk. This also allow us to understand the deep discomfort in which they live day to day.
Written by Gregory Mann.
