On February 24th 2022 the Russian Federation invaded the Ukraine on three fronts. What was originally planned as a "special military operation" to decapitate the government and turn a sovereign nation into a Russian puppet state, turned into a prolonged war that saw the complete destruction of entire cities and thousands of civilian casualties.
Sergei Loznitsa's film is a different kind of war documentary, different to the brutal carnage that is visible in films like
20 Days in Mariupol (2023), but more close to Olha Zhurba's
Songs of Slow Burning Earth (2024). War has besieged the land like a plague, lika a force of nature that makes no difference in what life it takes. But it is not natural, and the enemy remains faceless, hidden behind a trail of unfathomable pain and suffering. What has invaded the country, as it seems, is death and destruction itself.
Loznitsa's camera captures a tainted glimpse of everyday life in a war-torn country, between soldier's funerals, weddings, children in school, demining teams, people lining up for food rations, going about their daily routines, and a constant threat of air raids in every corner, every minute, every day. There are scenes of collapsed buildings, rescue workers and hospital staff trying to save the lives of victims. These are no pictures from the front lines, there are no tanks in the streets - and ripped out of context the viewer might think he is witnessing the aftermath of a terrible disaster. But the disaster is not an accident, the real catastrophe is a society trying to survive, trying to adapt, trying to resist, fighting for its existence, while the rolling thunder of war rumbles from afar.
In a remarkable scene an older woman stacks up bricks from her bombed house, alone in the middle of nowhere, the nomansland of an otherwise pittoresque landscape. A picture so iconic, reminiscent of the "Trümmerfrauen" after the Second World War. It begs the question what the war was doing here in the first place, miles and miles away from any strategic installation or any other object of military interest.
There is a creeping danger in war, when it turns from serving a political interest to serving itself; when the violence and destruction, the very presence of existential threat become a new normal. For a moment, in a specific place, war might be silent, invisible, seemingly far away; but Loznitsa's "The Invasion" is a haunting and depressing reminder that it is everpresent.
