03.11.2022

Trauma, terror, war and peace

Jim Moody reviews Causeway (directed by Lila Neugebauer, distributor: Apple TV) and Butterfly vision (directed by Maksym Nakonechnyi, distributor: MUBI)

Two films highlighting post-traumatic stress disorder, not only suffered by members of the armed forces, stood out at this year’s London Film Festival.

PTSD can affect persons in all kinds of situations. However, in Causeway the mental and physical trauma suffered by soldier Lynsey (Jennifer Lawrence) occurred while on active duty in Afghanistan. And that meant continuing treatment through the Veterans’ Administration (VA), once she is back home in New Orleans.

When she is there, Lynsey becomes friends with James (Brian Tyree Henry) and it emerges that he too has suffered trauma. His nephew died and James lost his leg in a car accident. The guilt of survivors, whether that guilt is justified or not, fuels trauma and exacerbates the PTSD, whose effects can last years - even a lifetime.

Lynsey tells her VA doctor how she received a serious injury in Afghanistan: an improvised explosive device (IED) set the vehicle she was in ablaze, killing the soldier next to her, while she fell unconscious with a shrapnel-induced brain bleed. This fictional event epitomises the experience of real service personnel, who are themselves victims of the USA’s self-appointed aggression against those peoples and countries around the world failing to obey the edicts of the world hegemon.

While there have been deaths and serious injuries of US and UK armed forces in recent conflicts, unfortunately there has not been resistance to US imperialism’s more recent depredations overseas, as there was during the Vietnam War, when US armed forces rebelled.¹ Without solidarity and a collectivity of resistance, it is hardly surprising that traumatic combat experience rebounds individually on former members of the armed forces - of the UK as well as the USA. Veterans in the UK, who we see on our streets minus limbs, are treated abominably by the state that sent them to fight: without an equivalent of the US Veterans’ Administration they have to depend on charities like Help for Heroes.

Causeway is a slow-paced and thoughtful work in which both Lawrence and Tyree Henry excel at depicting the measured reaction, as well as the occasional deep disturbance, well brought together in paced fashion by director Lila Neugebauer. And it illustrates how difficult it is to move forward after trauma, and perhaps how easy it can be to become over-dependent on others, ending in stasis. In the absence of formal, representative organisations for soldiers, sailors and airforce men and women - in short, trade unions - it is hardly surprising that despair, despondency and insularity descend on many.

Toward the end of the film, Lynsey remarks that she has experienced trauma elsewhere than in Afghanistan, obliquely suggesting that it was in her family. And this is the film’s nod to a serious condition experienced by many in the course of their civilian lives - PTSD is much more widespread than as a result of negative experiences while on active service in the military or police forces. It can also be prompted by traumas as various as sexual assault, child abuse and other domestic violence, and by direct threats to life, among other civil life experiences. Sometimes the most obvious causations are blanked by normalisation that capitalist societies inculcate. It is an unfortunate fact that trauma and PTSD are endemic in class society - the nature of capitalism bolstered and protected by its viciously partisan state.

Ukraine

In April 2014, following the Euromaidan rallying of the right and the subsequent ‘colour revolution’ (ie, reactionary coup) in Ukraine, the new government’s forces attacked armed separatist Russian-Ukrainians, who were supported by Russia, in the Donbas region (comprising the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces). Ukraine’s government first called this an ‘anti-terrorist operation’ (2014-18), then a ‘joint forces operation’. During this civil war, prisoners taken by both sides were periodically exchanged under the auspices of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

In Butterfly vision, Ukrainian aerial reconnaissance expert Lilia (Rita Burkovska) is one such prisoner (her code name is ‘Butterfly’). The film was completed before Russia invaded Ukraine early in 2022, only dealing with the immediately preceding conflict between Ukraine armed forces and Russian-backed separatists in the Donbas.

Lilia appears reasonably well when handed over by the Russian-Ukrainian separatists, the People’s Militia. However, appearances can be deceptive. Flashbacks plague her waking and sleeping hours, while various wounds on her body speak volumes about the treatment she received while a prisoner. What is not evident until later is that she is pregnant, as a result of being raped by one of her captors. Lilia’s husband, Tokha (Lyubomyr Valivots), reacts violently to the news of her pregnancy, smashing up her hospital room.

Tokha fails to acknowledge the trauma Lilia has experienced or to comfort her. In whatever way she had sex while captive, whether ‘willingly’ or forced (ie, rape), the simple fact that his wife had sex with someone else is all that matters to him: he reacts as a man believing he owns his wife’s body and is enraged that his possession has been despoiled. Tokha becomes an even more committed member of the far-right militia - he is shown pursuing Roma and Russian-Ukrainians to beat up and even kill.

Lilia unsurprisingly exhibits PTSD following her rape, the resultant pregnancy, and the beatings she received at the hands of her captors. With no domestic or societal support whatsoever, and with an unsympathetic husband, her prognosis is not great.

Butterfly vision provides a salutary warning of what a military ‘resolution’ of conflicts may mean for those taking part or close to the action. What, too, this film and Causeway should remind us of is what standing armies are primarily about: the coercion of a majority by a minority. Pour that undemocratic ideation into the motivation of soldiers following orders and fighting each other, and you inevitably have a tendency to engage in anti-human actions.

Whatever the current propaganda value of Butterfly vision in aiding the condemnation of broadly ‘Russian’ forces raping Ukrainian women (the film’s credits contain a statement that several members of the production crew have joined up to fight for Ukraine against the Russian invasion), there is weight in those accusations when directed against Russian army personnel, according to recent UN figures. What we see in Butterfly vision in fictional form illustrates a real-world common truth: tactical mass rape has been used and continues to be used repeatedly in military conflicts in the modern era. Given that rape is more about violence than sex, it is inevitable that under violence-based capitalist rule rape can be used as part of its unofficial armoury, just as the bombing of civilian targets is used to demoralise the enemy population. Publicising mass rape to enhance fear has been used as a weapon to terrorise populations in many armed conflicts (as well as in rightwing dictatorships since the 1960s: eg Brazil, Chile, Greece).

We know the Marxist alternative, of course: abolish the state’s standing armies and establish citizen militias of all able-bodies persons, whose members elect their officers. It goes without saying that neither UK/US armed forces nor the Russian or Ukrainian standing army - let alone the Russian-Ukrainian People’s Militias - stand in this democratic tradition.

In the here and now, communists demand democratic rights for members of existing armed forces, including the right to form trade unions, to elect officers and to organise collectively. But, until all working class partisans demand the formation of truly representative people’s militias, democratic rights for existing military personnel and the ultimate demilitarisation of human society will remain pipedreams.

Jim Moody

This article is based on reviews published on redSolent.org website

1. See ‘Vietnam and the US armed forces revolt’ Weekly Worker June 4 2008: weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/724/vietnam-and-the-us-armed-forces-revolt.↩︎