The Captain: War Is A Force That Robs All Meaning

May 03, 2024

“The enduring attraction of war is this: Even with its destruction and carnage it can give us what we long for in life. It can give us purpose, meaning, a reason for living.”

—Chris Hedges “War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning”

In the art form of cinema, the subject of war is an ideal that is often either romanticized or condemned throughout the modicum of a filmmaker’s willingness to capture the authenticity of the carnage and utter inhumanity that paints what a modern audience or general public will never understand as opposed to someone who’s directly confronted such a horror even at the expense of a sense of peace and sanity most will often take for granted. In most war-oriented cinema, it is usually the American, the British, or any type of military force that was on the right side of the war that is either championed or even humanized to a level where it makes it easier for us to glamorize and idealize them while equally despise the other side’s brutality. This goes to a much more effective extent when the enemy combatants are commonly made into Nazis. On the rare occasion that a Nazi is humanized, it is often done in the context of them being forced into the oppressive regime—which the third reich clearly was—rather then being guided by any maliciously bigoted anti-semitic views. But The Captain doesn’t go there. Instead, the film showcases how the nature of war itself regardless of what side one fights, can strip one of all meaning, even if the driving force was just survival.

The opening shot of a desperation stricken deserter such as Willi Herold (Max Hubacher) conveys a sense of empathy that is completely understandable when framed against all the horrors war can generate within a person who wasn’t ready to look carnage right in the face. But in spite of this, The Captain doesn’t refrain or sugar coat the inhumanities this historical figure participated in. For those unfamiliar with the history of Willi Herold, he was a German war criminal. In fact his infamy earned him the name of "the Executioner of Emsland. Near the end of World War II in Europe, Herold fled from the German Army only to then pose as a Luftwaffe captain. In this conscious act of long-standing impersonation, Herold organized the mass execution of German army deserters held at a prison camp, and it is through these actions in which he was later tried and executed for war crimes that the film shines in fully capturing the inherent horror that only war can showcase as human beings are treated as nothing more than commodities for all sorts of superficialities most people merely treat as background noise or even the butt of jokes made at celebratory dinners following the carnage.

“If we really saw war, what war does to young minds and bodies, it would be impossible to embrace the myth of war. If we had to stand over the mangled corpses of schoolchildren killed in Afghanistan and listen to the wails of their parents, we would not be able to repeat clichés we use to justify war. This is why war is carefully sanitized. This is why we are given war's perverse and dark thrill but are spared from seeing war's consequences. The mythic visions of war keep it heroic and entertaining…”

— Chris Hedges

In addition to the horrific moments where in order to maintain his facade as a decorated captain, Willi Herold orders the merciless execution of German deserters, he and the small militia band his lies awarded him indulge in a breed of mindlessly boorish entertainment. It’s nothing very different from the over stimulating manner of intoxication most people in the U.S. often embrace, whether its for an overly advertised sporting event, a bachelor party of utter debauchery, or even a victory party celebrating the chest puffing attitude we often give to wars we don’t have to fight, yet we’re told to champion as demonstrations of democratic loyalty. These are probably among the more disturbing ones because the memory of the horrific crimes perpetuated prior to them, the jolly exuberance most characters express denies them the ability to self-reflect or even mourn the evil they have just committed. It’s reasonable to say that among the 90 German deserters Herold and the fellow Nazi’s that bought into his lies were Nazi’s themselves. But the brilliance of The Captain comes in its ability to avoid the obligatory demonization of a regime that was already demonic in it’s anti-semantic hatred. The film instead focuses on the common humanity men are deprived of as they are taken and forced to sing as they march to the spot where they’ll be executed simply for running away from a battlefield that compelled them to do nothing short of sacrificing more and more of the humanity those who’ve never seen a war zone will ever understand.

“The wounded, the crippled, and the dead are, in this great charade, swiftly carted offstage. They are war's refuse. We do not see them. We do not hear them. They are doomed, like wandering spirits, to float around the edges of our consciousness, ignored, even reviled. The message they tell is too painful for us to hear. We prefer to celebrate ourselves and our nation by imbibing the myths of glory, honor, patriotism, and heroism, words that in combat become empty and meaningless.”

—Chris Hedges

It is these same variations of fantasy logic that dominate and curtail the character’s ability to face the reality of the horror they have become a part of. The Captain’s ability to empathize with characters who in any other context would be considered completely monstrous is done through the brief moments of silent awareness they experience as the full weight of their actions fails to completely escape them. But these brief moments of conscience fail to truly redeem what the film has clearly made irredeemable without resorting to whatever ant-semitic thinking paints their war-driven mindset, which only adds to the brilliance of the story.

The Captain is not a story of a Nazi commander’s path towards redemption Willi Herold is not a Wilm Hosenfeld who was famous for helping hide Jews during World War II. Herold’s depiction goes nothing short than a conniving opportunist who in the natural fear he felt from war exploited his chance to indulge in the same debauchery many SS officers recognized in their ability to use their ranks as soldiers and invaders to justify some of the most inhumane acts war can pardon for any person dawning a uniform. Whether it’s the psychopathic infantry unit in Oliver Stone’s Platoon or the jolly demeanor of the US. Soldiers gleefully torturing and dehumanizing Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib, war is a force that gives horrific and inherently meaningless acts like rape, torture, and senseless slaughter the kind of meaning that convinces its participants that they are morally exempt from the consequences.

If there is any lesson to be gained from a film like Robert Schwentke’s The Captain, then it is that not only is war a horrific event that allows for the perpetuation of unrelenting violence, but it further results in a mass form of desensitization where combatants will either find great glory or no feeling at all in gunning down men who wept to the same extent that a pack of fear stricken children would, only to then return to drinking and partying as if they were guests at a grand ceremony like the academy awards or the White House correspondence dinner. If there is any meaning to be found in war, then it is the tragic reality in that it robs everyone involved of all meaning.

"Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.”

—Ernest Hemingway

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