Australian filmmaker David Michôd (”Animal Kingdom”) had for years been interested in telling a story about modern warfare, but he hadn’t found what he was looking for. Then the production company Plan B brought him Michael Hastings’ book “The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America’s War in Afghanistan” and he’d found it.
“Suddenly, I saw a much larger and more interesting way to make a film about the entire military apparatus in all its different layers,” says the director, who loosely adapted the book into the film “War Machine,” which is available Friday on Netflix.
Brad Pitt, one of the film’s producers, plays fictional four-star Gen. Glen McMahon, who has been sent to Afghanistan to try to end the lengthy “unwinnable” war there. The big change from the book, a nonfiction account written by the late Rolling Stone reporter, was to fictionalize the account of U.S. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal’s experiences in Afghanistan from 2009-2010.
“What struck me when I read Michael Hastings’ book was that at the atomic level it’s about vanity and ambition,” Michod says.
McChrystal’s tumultuous tenure ended when he was fired by President Obama for making critical remarks about his administration, which Hastings reported. However, Michod wanted to create a “more heightened character” rather than simply offering a recounting of the book.
“In my earliest conversations with Brad, we talked about Michael’s book as more of a comedy that very much deals with the absurdity of the detachment of the upper levels of the military command from what is happening on the ground,” Michod says.
In the fictional version, we first see a confident McMahon arrive in Afghanistan surrounded by his inner circle: intelligence officers, tech wizards, a PR team and personal assistants who are fiercely loyal to him. They insulate him, and he is indulgent of their foibles, which are mostly fueled by drinking.
With McMahon, the director saw the character as having a sense of being from a long line of great American military war leaders, “that somewhere inside of him is this self-imagined MacArthur or Patton.”
“So we just decided to let that stuff come to the surface in a big way, to up the character’s swagger as a kind of anachronistic World War II general,” says Michod.
Indeed, Pitt’s character may remind viewers of a man caught out of time.
The portrait is not totally unsympathetic, though. Soon after McMahon takes over command, his plans run into snags, both from Washington and the Afghans. Ben Kingsley plays President Hamid Karzai, who here isn’t interested in a resolution of the war but in his own pocketbook. Meanwhile, civilian casualties provide new recruits to the Taliban.
Michod uses a narrator — a stand-in for Hastings in the character of Sean Cullen (Scoot McNairy) — to help explain the complex, confusing situation.
“It was very advantageous for us to have one clear voice of reason like a tour guide,” says the director. “Without that experience, the movie can be quite discombobulating.”
Pitt was actively involved in the early process, but when it came to shooting the film “he quite seamlessly slipped into actor mode,” says Michod.
Of course, it’s unusual for a Brad Pitt film — reportedly costing $60 million — to debut on Netflix. Michod admits he was somewhat surprised when the streamer initially showed interest.
“I want to make movies that feel bold and unusual. I’m willing to go with the flow of whatever commercial apparatus makes it possible,” the director says. “In the current climate, it’s very difficult to get bold and unusual films made within the traditional Hollywood studio system. So my experience of Netflix is one of a beautiful window opening. It takes pressure off opening weekend box-office numbers. I experienced it as freedom; we all did.”
