Andruétan, Yann
The pleasure of the eye
- 2019.
84
The cinema of war exercises a strange fascination on audiences. It even constitutes a form of guilty pleasure. Images of war have the power to captivate the human mind. The spectacle of violence, when accompanied by dramatic images and evocative music, durably captures the mind, conveys intense emotions and procures a form of satisfaction. This fascination includes a degree of ambiguity, because while it captivates the spectator it also provokes conflicting feelings—either of revulsion or, on the contrary, of numbing to violent images. It takes a talented film-maker to know how to use the imagery of war without pandering to the easy sensationalism of war as spectacle.