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Brad Pitt's New Movie Is a Reminder That We're at War All the Time

The director of 'War Machine' opens up about the problem with Trump and why we continue to forget we're at war.

The phrase "Brad Pitt at war" typically brings to mind the raspy southern drawl and maniacally violent drive of Inglorious Basterds' Lieutenant Aldo Raine. In War Machine, writer-director David Michôd (Animal Kingdom, The Rover) cast Pitt in a different type of wartime role: General Glen McMahon, whose own cockiness proves to be a pitfall instead of a saving grace. Michôd's film takes its story from Michael Hastings's book The Operators, which documents the rise and fall of General Stanley McChrystal. Despite the real-life trappings, the film's characters are fictionalized—but look out for General Hank Pulver (Anthony Michael Hall), McMahon's second-in-command who's based on McChrystal's former second in command: Michael Flynn.

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War Machine works as a candid look at modern day combat, and how one man's personality traits can end up affecting multiple countries for the worse. We spoke with Michôd to discuss hubris, America forgetting the war in Afghanistan and, of course, President Trump. Needless to say, he's not a fan.

VICE: How did you decide to take this project?
David Michôd: Jeremy Kleiner and Dede Gardner at Brad [Pitt's] company [Plan B Entertainment] brought me Michael's book. I'd been reading about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for quite a long time, but when I delved into the details of Michael's book, [I] saw a film about delusion, ambition, vanity, hubris—and how the behavior of individuals can manifest [themselves] on a giant, catastrophic, global stage.

You mentioned hubris and vanity—in light of making this film, what are your thoughts about the rhetoric of Trump's administration?
I don't think Trump's greatest personality failure is his hubris—I think it's all the other stuff: the narcissism, the insecurity, his emotional infantilism. Hubris is all over the place, and you see it in every arm of a giant corporation or institution. Our responsibility is to manage that stuff. What's scary about Trump is the crazy juvenile shit.

I don't think this movie's message is peculiar to any particular end of the political spectrum. It's about the military and the ways in which it engages with the civilian executive, regardless of its political tropes. Trump is scary, because who knows that the hell he's thinking? While I'm sad that Hillary didn't win the election, it wouldn't have changed the things this movie addresses. She's hardly a wallflower when it comes to war.

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The film somewhat implicitly skewers Obama and Hillary.
I decided early on to change the names of the characters in the film because I didn't want this to be a Stan McChrystal biopic, or a hatchet job on any particular individual. I did feel that I needed to at least keep the names of Obama and [former president of Afghanistan] Hamid Karzai, just to have those flagpoles and historical moments. But the secretary of state [in the film] isn't called "Hillary Clinton." I guess everyone draws an immediate association.

Do you feel like we've forgotten the war in Afghanistan?
I don't know. What's scary is that it's been going on for so long and has widened out so insidiously to the extent that this "war on terror" is being fought in seven or eight different countries. It's happening quietly, and it's happening by remote control and joystick, with secretive special operators and counterterrorism forces. The scary thing is that we don't think it isn't normal. We've gotten to a point where we've just accepted that we're at war and we probably will be all the time. It wasn't always this way.

In the 2008 election, one of the main points of debate was how Obama and McCain would handle Iraq and Afghanistan. Now it rarely comes up anymore.
Obama was the first two-term US president at war during the entire duration of his presidency. That's kind of scary. There'll be kids who are getting very close to finishing high school who have never known an America that wasn't at war.

It's easy to sit here now and say this stuff is crazy, but we have to remember what a profound event 9/11 was. For many, it rendered everything that preceded it irrelevant. It was a rock thrown at a hornet's nest. In World War II, the military and the civilian were one in the same. Everybody's family had someone who fought in the war or was affected by it. Now, with the advent of a standing army and a distinct, separate warrior class that often draws from the most underprivileged classes, it allows a nation to stay at war without ever having to question the larger implications.

Would you classify War Machine as a specifically anti-war film?
Yes, although war is a factor of human civilization and has been for millennia. I would never suggest that this film is against the fighting of war under any circumstances—I just think that there are basic questions that should always be answered [before waging war].

In the 80s, there was a thing called the Weinberger Doctrine, written by the secretary of defense [Caspar Weinberger]. It asks, "Is this operation absolutely in our vital national interest? Are the objectives concrete and achievable? Does this war have popular and congressional support? Is this the last resort?" Those questions need to be answered in the affirmative before you go to war. I think we've lost sight of that. So this a movie that's anti to a war that doesn't say yes to those questions.

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