Restrepo (Tim Hetherington & Sebastian Junger, 2010)
Years back I went through a phase where I wanted to watch a bunch of war movies. Pro-war movies (Saving Private Ryan) anti-war movies (Paths of Glory), and ambiguous war movies (Platoon) to sort of ponder how ideology comes through in screen war.
Some of the basic facts of Restrapo are staggering:
- One of the soldiers remarks that the government doesn't know how to process them after their 15-month deployment in the Korengal Valley, a deadly, but quite beautiful region in eastern Afghanistan, because there haven't been such shell shocked soldiers since Vietnam
- Another soldier says that he's been on 6 different prescriptions of sleeping pills with no success but that he'd rather stay awake than experience his chronic nightmares
- They are attacked almost every day. In the course of digging and building their advanced outpost - they're only meager accomplishment - they are attacked 7 times in one day. They dig until they are attacked after which they put down their pick axes and pick up their arms and defend themselves until the enemy leaves, then they pick up their digging tools again. Insane!
- When the platoon returns home the US goes on to be defeated in the region and pulls out rendering the entire effort and loss of life meaningless
Here you have a documentary that purports to be neutral as if objectively rendering just one side of the conflict is equivalent to neutrality. In places where that idea breaks down the really questionable aspects of the war become apparent.
The platoon has regular meetings with the elders of the Korengal Valley. That are really frustrating. The mutual distrust is obvious. The US forces contempt for they people they are ostensibly liberating really comes out. The locals are basically told what's good for them and then asked to put their own lives at risk to inform on the Taliban. They are essentially told, 'look we're different than the soldiers that came before us, ok? They people we've captured are going to be treated humanely, they won't just "disappear" like before.'
The film also offers a look into the horrifying way in which our forces wage attacks. First they send helicopters to bomb the villages. Then they go from house to house and kidnap suspicious people if they are still alive. In-between this attack and their objective are the families and civilians. Obviously this is not something that the film shows many images of - this is National Geographic not Al Jazeera - you don’t see the casualties but you see the injured. Somehow it's this unintended suggestion of the worst carnage was excised from the film that is most disturbing. The camera lingers uncomfortably on children covered with dirt in a bombed out house. The look on the Sergeant's face is one of utter uselessness, "It's really disappointing when we kill civilians".
On the other side of this when one of the elder's cows gets ensnared in razor wire they go to the soldiers to seek compensation. They go to their higher ups for permission to buy them a new cow. They are denied and you see them return to the villagers and basically say yes we destroyed your cow, we cannot give you money, we'll give you it's weight in beans.
When describing what they want and what they're doing there they literally say 'killing bad guys'.
Some of the basic facts of Restrapo are staggering:
- One of the soldiers remarks that the government doesn't know how to process them after their 15-month deployment in the Korengal Valley, a deadly, but quite beautiful region in eastern Afghanistan, because there haven't been such shell shocked soldiers since Vietnam
- Another soldier says that he's been on 6 different prescriptions of sleeping pills with no success but that he'd rather stay awake than experience his chronic nightmares
- They are attacked almost every day. In the course of digging and building their advanced outpost - they're only meager accomplishment - they are attacked 7 times in one day. They dig until they are attacked after which they put down their pick axes and pick up their arms and defend themselves until the enemy leaves, then they pick up their digging tools again. Insane!
- When the platoon returns home the US goes on to be defeated in the region and pulls out rendering the entire effort and loss of life meaningless
Here you have a documentary that purports to be neutral as if objectively rendering just one side of the conflict is equivalent to neutrality. In places where that idea breaks down the really questionable aspects of the war become apparent.
The platoon has regular meetings with the elders of the Korengal Valley. That are really frustrating. The mutual distrust is obvious. The US forces contempt for they people they are ostensibly liberating really comes out. The locals are basically told what's good for them and then asked to put their own lives at risk to inform on the Taliban. They are essentially told, 'look we're different than the soldiers that came before us, ok? They people we've captured are going to be treated humanely, they won't just "disappear" like before.'
The film also offers a look into the horrifying way in which our forces wage attacks. First they send helicopters to bomb the villages. Then they go from house to house and kidnap suspicious people if they are still alive. In-between this attack and their objective are the families and civilians. Obviously this is not something that the film shows many images of - this is National Geographic not Al Jazeera - you don’t see the casualties but you see the injured. Somehow it's this unintended suggestion of the worst carnage was excised from the film that is most disturbing. The camera lingers uncomfortably on children covered with dirt in a bombed out house. The look on the Sergeant's face is one of utter uselessness, "It's really disappointing when we kill civilians".
On the other side of this when one of the elder's cows gets ensnared in razor wire they go to the soldiers to seek compensation. They go to their higher ups for permission to buy them a new cow. They are denied and you see them return to the villagers and basically say yes we destroyed your cow, we cannot give you money, we'll give you it's weight in beans.
When describing what they want and what they're doing there they literally say 'killing bad guys'.