(Bertrand Bonello,2008)
Spiritual disciplines span the spectrum from quiet personal self-reflection to physically militant offensives against the ego that tyrannizes us all. Writer/Director Bertrand Bonello’s latest film On War deals with the latter.On War is a film about purging—the purging of self, of attachment to the world, and of attachment to assumptions about one’s self in the world. As the characters in the film suggest, it is only through this purging that a person may fully release into the immediacy of joy and pleasure. And it is joy and pleasure, things real and authentic, that our protagonist Bertrand (Mathieu Amalric) is searching for.
As he toils on the screenplay for his next film, a forty-something filmmaker, Bertrand, begins to undergo a deep inner transformation. The idea of death haunts him and the materialistic world begins to feel alien to him. He meets a young man, Charles, who invites him to join his group of friends who live in a run-down building in the countryside. There, Bertrand discovers a community of happy souls led by an enchanting woman named Uma. It is a whole new world, where individuals live as they choose, at ease and at peace with one another, taking advantage of the pleasures that nature offers them, without the clutter, anxiety and artificiality of the world Bertrand seeks to take refuge from. But is there a darker side to this paradise?
