War Film Conventions

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A Greek philosopher, Heraclitus once said “If you do not expect the unexpected, you will not find it; for it is hard to be sought out and difficult”.

I will bet most of you here expect to see masculine adult soldiers, a lot combat and camouflage colours when you watch a film that belongs to the war genre.

But what if I told you that not all war films are like this?

A lot of films we watch alter their individual genre’s typical conventions to achieve a specific purpose, and Cary Fukunaga’s war film; ‘Beasts of No Nation (2015)’ does this powerfully. ‘Beasts of No Nation’ carries some of the accepted conventions of its genre but also brilliantly subverts some aspects of it to shed more light on a few of the things that a lot of war films …show more content…
It is unknown to viewers like you and me, when and where the war is being fought, and why. All we know and see is tall forests, rebel attacks and uncivilized towns; and this is in no way, typical of the war genre. A proper setting such as a time period or a country is normally established, paired with a reason for the war to give viewers more insight on the events that occur in the film. But because ‘Beasts of No Nation’ doesn’t offer a setting or a reason for the war, it makes its audience feel very lost and estranged; which is exactly what the film sets out to make its viewers think is what war feels like. Yet another very clever tactic used by Fukunaga to deter us from war.

In addition to this, another way the film-maker makes viewers feel unsettled is through the use of unconventional colours. Generally, we see a lot browns, greens and other neutral shades in the form of mud, dirt, grass and camouflage attire in war films, and this fixed colour scheme doesn’t change. But in this particular film, it does. At one point, we see pink; pink forests and people. This only calls for speculation; why would the film-maker place such an odd colour in the
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