Sightlines · how to watch
How to watch Casualties of War
1989 · Brian De Palma · Casualties of War on Sightlines
5 things to watch and listen for on a first viewing, without spoilers, and 3 more once you have seen it. Each names something you can see or hear, the pattern it belongs to, and what noticing it gives you. How these keys work.
On a first viewing
Watch where Eriksson stands relative to the rest of the squad. (staging)
De Palma repeatedly frames Eriksson at the margin of the group, physically apart from Meserve's squad in the hooch, the river crossing, and other shared spaces.
Payoff: You can read who is complicit and who refuses from where each man stands, before anyone speaks. In the reading: the gest. The reading calls this a gest: a posture that exposes a social relation, here standing apart from your own unit.
Notice how often the whole squad stays in focus at once. (camera)
Stephen H. Burum shoots in deep focus and wide anamorphic frames, keeping every man in the squad legible in a single image rather than cutting between them.
Payoff: You do not need a cutaway to see who goes along and who does not. In the reading: the closed set (cadre). The reading calls a frame built this way a closed set: a single image dense enough to hold complicity and refusal together.
Listen for the woodwinds under the jungle's ordinary sounds. (sound)
Ennio Morricone's elegiac score, built on plaintive woodwind and vocal lines, plays against the flat, physical sound of insects, water, and gunfire in the jungle.
Payoff: The music grieves over the action instead of driving it, closer to a requiem than a war score.
Notice how muted and misted the jungle's green stays. (light)
Cinematographer Stephen H. Burum renders the jungle exteriors in humid, desaturated green and enveloping mist, a landscape that swallows the patrol moving through it.
Payoff: The color keeps beauty and dread in the same shot, never letting the setting turn merely scenic.
Watch how long the film holds a tense scene before cutting away. (cutting)
Editor Bill Pankow builds sustained tension the way a thriller would, but aims it at a moral question instead of a criminal one: will anyone refuse.
Payoff: The suspense makes you wait for a choice instead of a crime, which keeps your attention on conscience.
The 3 rewatch keys open on this page when you choose "Seen it?".
Carry this in: Watch where Eriksson stands apart from the rest of the squad. The distance is the whole argument.