Eye Level War is generally established at the step of everyday life, a hopeless existence for Ukraine. ‘Eddy’s War’ does not appear to be miserable from now on. Still, the viewer knows what lies behind destroyed houses and clouds of smoke in the sky, because this viewer is aware of current events.
We meet a Dutch war photographer who always looks for the ‘most beautiful image’. It’s cynical, but not too much so, because Eddy van Wessel’s most striking pictures with which he wins awards reach the world with a clear message: this has got to stop. And what we see in this film is that it’s got to happen fast.
People like you and me without home or hearth around a campfire in cold water, bombs roaring in the background, an indefatigable but patient photographer – these are not the first images that Joost van der Valk uses to impress upon us. No smooth editing either, but real-time misery in Ukrainians’ daily lives.
What it comes down to is that war drains people slowly. Most ordinary Ukrainians do not scream; they’re not at the front; they try to survive while Putin takes away their future. So don’t expect a flashy war documentary or ego-document: expect a raw close-up account of what warfare does to people in modern Europe.
Don’t expect sensationalism either, but something more like the funeral of a teenage daughter rendered in color photography while a summer breeze rustles through trees together with enough said by Van Wessel’s monochrome brutal beauty photographs. Here reigns silence and tidying up is the only thing that makes sense. Van Wessel has stopped time perfectly well.
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