Ukraine war documentary 2000 Meters to Andriivka is a horrifying triumph

"There is, of course, an element of beauty in this. And I must say that this is surely, from ancient times, one of the most enduring appeals of battle," explains author, philosopher and soldier J. Glenn Gray in the final episode of BBC's classic Second World War documentary, The World at War.

He's speaking about the Allied bombardment of southern France, a terrific spectacle of violence that, he says, made him believe the coast would literally detach itself, and simply fall off into the ocean. A scene so terrible and awesome, he says, "everybody — including, of course, myself — was drawn into it. So that we forgot all about ourselves." So beautiful they'd forgotten that in a few hours, they'd have to head into it.

Why begin a review of Ukrainian war documentary 2000 Meters to Andriivka — crafted by Mstyslav Chernov, the director of Oscar-winning 20 Days in Mariupol — with the description of a battle that occurred almost a century earlier?

Well for one, it's continuing a trend that has all but dominated cinematic history both between and before those two wars. From the first best picture winner at the Academy Awards (Wings in 1927), to the current highest grossing movie of all time (Avatar), we can't seem to get enough military action in our entertainment, despite its real-life horror.

WATCH | Ukrainian village of Andriivka grapples with trauma:

WARNING: This video contains graphic content. Like many in newly liberated areas near Kyiv, people in the village of Andriivka are just starting to process their traumatic experiences while living under Russian occupation.

But more importantly, we can't seem to stop debating why we want to see war recreated on film, how much of it to include — and how filmmakers should go about depicting it. For example: Is Jojo Rabbit poking fun at the Nazis by dismantling their evil, or disrespecting their victims? Did Apocalypse Now actually function as an anti-war film, or turn Ride of the Valkyries into a glorifying anthem of American military might? Is Top Gun Pentagon propaganda?

Perhaps most recently, those debates sprung up around Alex Garland's Iraq-war feature Warfare, a real-time battle recreation intentionally devoid of character growth, plot or examination that I dubbed, in short, unethical.

So in going to bat for 2000 Meters to Andriivka, at least a bit of explanation is necessary. And the documentary, receiving its Canadian premiere at Hot Docs on April 27 ahead of a fall theatrical release, does operate in ways that seem very similar to Warfare.

As with 20 Days in Mariupol, which documented the early days of Russia's invasion, Chernov embeds himself in the thick of battle. Though here, his camera will occasionally find itself affixed to the helmets of actual soldiers, battling for inches on a two kilometre stretch of forest between them and a small Ukrainian village.

That village — Andriivka — is occupied by Russian forces at the film's opening. With a tiny population of about 100, it doesn't necessarily hold great cultural significance like, for example, the contested urban centres of Bakhmut and Pokrovsk.

But, as Chernov explains in the monotone he's seemingly inherited from the violence he's somehow managed to live through, capturing it would disrupt Russian supply lines.

Figuring out a way to tag along, Chernov documents the enormous human cost associated with accomplishing that task. The film opens with a horrifically unvarnished firefight, a nightmare recording of whizzing bullets, shattered legs and death.

It continues on, never shying away from the violence, holding our heads toward the dying young men in a way that borders on the obscene. Surely, this can't be allowed. Surely, there must be some rule against showing 24-year-old Gagarin in the centre of the frame, pumping bullets off into the distance, only to slump suddenly to his side as a bullet enters his body. Surely, there has to be a law against showing this man's death.

But no, it would seem, there is not. We witness death many times, soldiers killed on both sides — including a Russian soldier exiting a foxhole who's shot until he's motionless, then shot again as he lies on the ground. Why isn't this unethical; voyeurism meant to satisfy what Gray calls war's main draw: "this attraction of the outlandish, the strange"?

In some ways it is. The combined force of morose interviews with soldiers, paired with either voice-over commentary on their later deaths, video of their funerals or their actual on-screen endings would border on maudlin if they weren't so harrowing.

It's a combination transparently effective enough to lead to mass protest against Russians at War, the 2024 documentary that made a similar point from the perspective of the aggressors — and the Russian soldiers featured in that film appeared almost as ambivalent and disenchanted with the war as some of Chernov's subjects do here.

But there is a grim strategy to it, one Chernov brings up toward the end of the movie when talking about the long slog of the war, which has been going on for more than two years.

"This war is a nightmare none of us can wake up from," he says, lamenting that the longer the nightmare goes on, the less anyone abroad will care about it.

It's a devastatingly accurate assessment, even as new offensives, counter-offensives and errant social media posts bring the war back into headlines. And it's a point 2000 Meters to Andriivka makes with the spectacle of war it uses as a vehicle, even while railing against its necessity.

Because importantly, this movie does not, like Warfare, posture toward impartiality. Garland argued that his Warfare served a purpose by taking the artistic manipulations out of war movies and instead giving audiences the "unfiltered" experience of war.

But in actuality, Chernov knows that even these real, actual deaths caught on camera cannot hope to recreate the horror of actually being in a war, your own body at real and constant risk instead of the ones on screen.

To put context to the gore, Chernov is constantly there, asking what is this war for? What's the point? Some soldiers answer in vaguely heroic terms, saying that, eventually, Ukraine will triumph. Others — including a captured Russian soldier — simply say they have no idea why they put their lives at jeopardy every day. Later there is a more macabre observation.

"During the liberation of the Kharkiv region, I saw the places of my childhood — you know, where I visited my grandmother. But they're all gone. You are walking on either ruins or graves," says a voice speaking in Ukrainian.

The assessment is further reinforced when they reach Andriivka, which is little more than abandoned rubble. Control of the town has been traded between Russia and Ukraine numerous times already, and it's likely to happen numerous times more rather than ever being rebuilt.

"What they are liberating — it appears as though they are liberating your home. But it's just ruins and graves," the voice continues.

Instead, the importance is in what it means: a liberated city can be championed by civilians back home, avoiding the trauma of hearing another city fall.

It's little comfort for the soldiers in the foxhole though. They are dying, in part, for appearances. Chernov is capturing the strangeness and immensity of their deaths for them, too, so the world knows they're still fighting. And, as 2000 Meters to Andriivka so accurately captures, there is nothing beautiful about death.