"Theatre of War" Film Review

Directed by John W. Walter, the Theatre of War is a documentary film about the playwright Bertolt Brecht and the production process of his play "Mother Courage and Her Children." The film uses rehearsal footage from the 2006 play staring Meryl Streep as Mother Courage. The film goes into Bertolt Brecht's background and covers his exile and the proceedings with the House Un-American Activities Committee. Weaved into this plot are short interviews with the actors of "Mother Courage and Her Children" and their thoughts about the meaning of war.

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Overall, the film has an interesting presentation, but the execution is a bit confusing. The film jumps around between brief clips of interviews, play rehearsals, wartime footage— somehow leaving the audience disconnected, even bored. This is the film's mean problem. It fails to evoke an emotional response from the audience, instead the film feeds viewers a stream of choppy information.

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Perhaps, however, this can be viewed as an ingenious and intentional act by the director John Walter. After all, Brecht was a playwright who deliberately wrote his plays to avoid emotional ties with the audience. Walter may have been seeking to employ some of Brecht's epic theatre style in his film. For example, the numerous clips and distinct feel of the film could be seen as evoking the style of the play "Mother Courage and Her Children," which has 12 scenes which can all stand on their own.

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Brecht wanted the audience to know that a play was just a play; one method Brecht used in his epic theatre was keeping the stage flooded with light so that the audience could see the different parts of the set. He did not want the audience to identify with the characters. Brecht wanted his audience to leave from a play with more than just mere thoughts and actually go beyond and take the initiative to change their world.

Theatre of War was anything but usual. The behind-the-scenes footage of a play's production process gave an interesting layer of transparency and an overall organic feeling to what can be called an heavily edited film. This film is worth watching even if solely for the purpose of seeing Meryl Streep on stage and her honest, insightful thoughts about war.