A Good Day to Die, Hoka Hey

Main­stream war block­busters some­times sac­ri­fice old fash­ioned hon­esty for spe­cial effects and a sub­li­ma­tion of vio­lence. War, too often, is depict­ed as an illu­so­ry space, a far away fan­ta­sy dis­con­nect­ed from every­day real­i­ty. Harold Mon­fils’ film, A Good Day To Die, Hoka Hey, chal­lenges con­ven­tion and the nar­ra­tives that glo­ri­fy con­flict to offer an inter­ac­tive and authen­tic expe­ri­ence of warfare.

This fas­ci­nat­ing fea­ture doc­u­men­tary adopts a sat­is­fy­ing, inno­v­a­tive genre approach to the sto­ry of British free­lance war pho­tog­ra­ph­er Jason P Howes. Rather than a sin­gle plot line, the film is a mosa­ic of his 12 years doc­u­ment­ing some of today’s most bloody con­flicts: Columbia’s civ­il war with the FARCS; Iraq’s strug­gle with ter­ror­ism; Afghanistan’s bat­tle with the Tal­iban; and Lebanon’s civ­il war. The film is a refresh­ing tale of day-to-day liv­ing, cov­er­ing the dilem­mas and set­backs, the pain and loss­es expe­ri­enced by those involved these con­flicts. It is is an account of war as it hap­pens, as opposed to how gov­ern­ments or lob­bies want it to look.

To achieve this, the view­er is plunged direct­ly into the real­i­ties of bat­tle. Howe’s hand held cam­era footage makes the image swing and stag­ger as he dash­es to safe­ty. Through­out the film, his shock­ing pho­tographs are super­im­posed over cor­re­spond­ing footage and diegetic sounds, often big explo­sions which are com­ple­ment­ed with Howe’s mem­o­ries. This styl­is­tic process is the film’s most suc­cess­ful fea­ture: through this holis­tic nar­ra­tive, view­ers can re-live the narrator’s war experiences.

Mon­fils does occa­sion­al­ly roll back to over-drama­ti­sa­tion by plac­ing emo­tion­al music over the odd juicy sub­plot. Howe’s trag­ic romance with a FARC assas­sin, which sparks an unnec­es­sary melo­dra­mat­ic twist, is pushed way too far and it under­mines the over­all raw­ness of tone. If the star-crossed lovers are wor­thy of their own film, and the film’s brief flirt with clichés is slight­ly deceiv­ing. Still, A Good Day To Die is a must see for those long­ing for a gen­uine and orig­i­nal micro-account of major conflicts.