If You Want Peace, Prepare for War (1975)
If You Want Peace, Prepare for War is a genuinely lovely piece of craft that runs out of things to say almost before it has begun. Zofia Oraczewska's short is a delicate, distinctive bit of work, closer to paper art than animation in the traditional sense, and it makes its anti-war point with a real visual charm. It just does not have quite enough underneath it to land, and at only six minutes it is over before it can build to anything. Two and a half stars.
The idea is a nice one. Two armies face off in a standoff near a border, and as the deadlock drags on, nature quietly reclaims the war machines, creeping and overgrowing the hardware until the whole apparatus of conflict is swallowed by green. The soldiers themselves, meanwhile, turn out to be perfectly friendly with one another despite being on opposing sides, a gentle little jab at the sheer futility of the whole business.
As a visual object it is charming. The paper-craft style is unusual and clearly the work of care rather than resources, and I have a lot of time for the obvious skill and modest scale of it. The problem is simply that the message, war is futile, is delivered and then the film stops, with no real development, complication or surprise to give it weight.
Two and a half stars. A pretty, well-made and good-hearted miniature that is a touch too slight to leave much of a mark. There is talent on show here, but it needed either more time or more to say.
Reviewed as part of the Samizdat Eastern European Film Festival's Politics of the Imagination programme.
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