Is it too soon?
One might easily pose this question with regard to War Game, the chilling new documentary from Tony Gerber and Jesse Moss, which opens this weekend at the Coolidge. Actually, strictly speaking, “documentary” might not quite be the right term; the political crisis we watch unfold is technically a work of fiction, a worst-case scenario which plays out in simulation to allow lawmakers a sort of dress rehearsal before the unthinkable occurs. And if I may add a qualifier to my qualifier, “unthinkable” is perhaps no longer the correct term for this particular scenario, in which an armed, cult-like mob refuses to accept the results of a presidential election and storms the Capitol Building; we were all staring at our TVs on January 6, 2021, and know all too well that it can, in fact, happen here.
But when I ask “Is it too soon?” I’m not questioning the production of War Game, or any documentary attempting to parse the stupid and terrifying political moment of the past decade or so; such films are necessary to try to make sense of our times, and perhaps to try to make them better. Rather, I’m talking about my own role as a critic. War Game is, after all, a hypothetical about something which may or may not actually happen in the very near future; on an actual day just over four months from now, we will know whether it served as a prescient omen or as a mere warning. How can one “review” something like this without the imminent benefit of hindsight?
I should specify that the hypothetical at play here is not simply “What if there was a coup?” We got our answer to that one a few years ago. The premise of this particular war game hinges on a specific variable: a retired general, serving as the de facto mouthpiece of a fictional domestic terrorist cell in the QAnon/Proud Boys vein, posts a series of videos in the midst of the coup urging American armed forces to abandon their posts and join the insurrectionists (this character, portrayed by actor Ralph Brown, is explicitly modeled after Michael Flynn, who served as Trump’s national security advisor for a few weeks before being tried for perjury over his ties to the Russian government; that the real Flynn is nowhere near as diabolically charismatic as Brown’s character is, perhaps, a small comfort). As armed standoffs spread to state houses across the country, the incumbent president and his staff are forced to make some difficult choices in their desperate gambit to preserve democracy.
To be clear, this is not some Christopher Guest-style mockumentary; apart from Brown and a few ancillary characters, most of the principles here are not actors but professional politicians. The president is portrayed by former Montana Governor Steve Bullock, and his cabinet includes former Senators Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) and Doug Jones (D-AL) and retired general (and 2004 presidential candidate) Wesley Clark, among other notables. All of them are familiar with the ins and outs of political strategy (many were in office during the turbulent Trump years, if not on January 6 itself), and take the proceedings seriously. We know, of course, that we are watching an exercise (there are occasional cutaways to the game’s control room, which present a welcome reality check), but it’s impossible not to be invested in the outcome. We do have a vested interest, after all.
Of course, you’ll notice the words “former” and “retired” a few times in the above paragraph, which puts a bit of a finer point on things. We are not watching the politicians who will be making the actual decisions if and when things come to blows on January 25, 2025, which does ultimately frame War Game as a piece of theater. These politicians are acting out a plausible scenario for our benefit– and, we hope, the people actually in charge. The game was developed by members of the non-profit Vet Voice Foundation as a wake-up call for both politicians and audiences to recognize the very real and present danger of radicalism among US Armed Forces. In interviews, the members of Vet Voice involved in the game describe from personal experience the ways in which Army culture both attracts and foments concerning right-wing beliefs, which is compounded by the higher-ups’ tendency to circle their wagons against scrutiny. It’s frankly terrifying stuff, and not recommended viewing immediately before bedtime.
Understandably, War Game plays like a thriller as much as a documentary, complete with dramatic camera angles and musical stings. The extremists’ lair is even decorated with fictional (and I suspect some real) propaganda, though the actors on that end of things (mostly Vet Voice volunteers) don’t remain in character like the pols do; instead, they calmly describe their social media misinformation campaign, plucking images and videos from unrelated warzones via Google Image Search to sow confusion about what is actually happening in our backyard. If it’s occasionally difficult to follow the ins and outs of the conflict, that’s by design; surely, by now, you’ve experienced all of this before from the other end of the doomscroll.
Eventually, the participants of the game reach an outcome, and we know from the reactions of the supervisors (and the triumphant score) that it is the one that they’d hoped for. This is perhaps the one moment at which the filmmakers overplay their hand; the “happy ending” is unsatisfying not because we disagree with the outcome, but because we’ve all been here before. We survived January 6, but shockingly little changed. Once the smoke cleared and the furniture had been repaired, the powers that be fell right back in line behind the man who publicly called for their own murders. Now that we’re right back in the same position we were in four years ago, it’s hard not to feel like a bird flying repeatedly into the same window.
Which brings us back to how to judge a film like War Game in the moment. It’s very effective as a thriller, and I think it’s very effective as a work of documentary activism– though I suppose the proof will be in the pudding, won’t it? But maybe that’s the wrong way to look at it; if documentaries are to be judged solely by whether or not they effect change in the world, the list of good documentaries would be pretty much winnowed down to The Thin Blue Line and Titticut Follies. But War Game does successfully make its viewers aware of a problem they might not have thought of– or at least not considered the implications– and does so in an engaging and easily accessible (if somewhat harrowing manner). Time will tell whether or not War Game will age into a prophecy or a curio, but if it changes even one mind, it will be worth it.
War Game
2024
dir. Tony Gerber & Steve Moss
94 min.
Opens Friday, 8/30 @ Coolidge Corner Theatre
Co-director Tony Gerber will be present for a post-film Q&A following the 7:15 screening on 8/30!
