Towards the end of a chapter on a Bertrand Tavernier movie set just after the first world war, David Thomson writes: “I doubt there is any such thing as an anti-war film.” In its context it seems hardly more than a passing observation, but in fact the thought is fundamental to Thomson’s project. For what the eminent British film critic is writing about, at some length and in compelling and often limpidly beautiful prose, is war itself and our ambiguous relation to it, or at least to its representation in moving images – moving in more senses than one.
But are we moved to sorrow and pity, sitting in a darkened cinema with our faces lifted rapturously to the light of battle flickering across the screen? At the pictures, everyone is 11 years old, and 11-year-olds glory in the mayhem going on up there, and the more blood and mangled bodies the better. Oh dear, the appalled adult in us murmurs, as the bullets fly and the arteries sever, oh dear, oh dear, but our exulting inner child silently shouts: go on, kill ’em all!
