FILM REVIEW: DIRTY WARS By: Faiz No comments

A scene from Dirty Wars.

Scar on mirror

By John Esther

Director Richard Rowley’s superb and solemn documentary does not paint a pretty picture of U.S. foreign policy under the Obama administration.

The Dirty Wars narrative, sort of, starts one night after a U.S. raid results in the deaths of innocent Afghani men, women and children. U.S. sources give one side of the story. Those present, like family members of the victims, give another.

There to uncover what happened before and during the tragedy is journalist Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army). Not one to be embedded, Schahill’s thorough investigation ultimately leads to the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC).

Essentially, a powerful, U.S. covert and secret organization (although not so secret after killing Osama bin Laden), JSOC’s mission is to “find, fix and finish” anything and anyone deemed its target, even if the target is a United States citizen – two of which are actually killed during Scahill’s investigation during the documentary. Why or when something or someone becomes a target is unknown yet JSOC, AKA “American Taliban with big muscles and beards,” continues to grow, without any congressional oversight.

And what is the result? As we have recently learned, there have been more assassinations, drone killings, etc., and granted, it is not like the Obama administration is doing anything new with regard to America’s so-called “War on Terror.” But the Noble Peace Prize Winner was supposed to be less belligerent president than his predecessor.

Winner of the Sundance Cinematography Award: U.S. Documentary, Dirty Wars is the kind of documentary that demands serious attention and even a more serious response from Americans.

 

AUSTIN 2011: HELL AND BACK AGAIN By: Faiz No comments

A scene from Hell and Back Again.

Peace amongst the fire

By Don Simpson

It is the Summer of 2009. A decisive operation is launched by the United States to begin a new counter-insurgency strategy in Afghanistan. The U.S. Marines of Echo Company 2nd Battalion 8th Regiment are dropped deep behind enemy lines to seize a key objective.

Danfung Dennis’s Hell and Back Again opens with Echo Company preparing to take a Taliban stronghold. During their mission, they are ambushed and lose a man. Six months later — near the end of his deployment with Echo Company — Sergeant Nathan Harris is critically injured by a bone-shattering bullet to his hip. Dennis then follows the 25-year-old Harris back to his home in North Carolina, where he and his wife try to piece their lives back together again.

While in North Carolina, Hell and Back Again ponders if and how a war-ravaged Sergeant can readjust to the civilian world, where parking a car at Wal-Mart becomes more stressful and difficult than time spent behind enemy lines in Afghanistan. When Harris says, “I would rather be in Afghanistan where it’s simple,” we believe him because we can tell just by looking at him how mentally and physically painful his post-Afghanistan life has become.

Harris’ civilian life is a relentless cycle of pain, pills, and nausea. He wheels around town, perpetually over-medicated and depressed. This is the very same guy who initially joined the Marines because he always wanted to kill people. Even now, Harris plays with loaded guns as if they are part of a video game. He would return to Afghanistan in a heartbeat. Even his wife admits that Harris turns in to a different person sometimes. In fact, the man she married will never be returning home.

As if visualizing the post-traumatic flashbacks that Harris must be experiencing, Hell and Back Again seamlessly bounces from Harris’ present day experiences to his time spent in Afghanistan. Obviously not knowing that Harris was going to get injured in battle, Dennis initially tagged along with Echo Company as a full-immersion war documentary ala Restrepo and Armadillo. The war footage is brutal and ugly, but not nearly as scary as the noisy, crowded and fluorescent world waiting for Harris back in the United States.

Strangely enough, Dennis breaks from his cinéma vérité form at the end of Hell and Back Again in making the unlikely decision to visually reenact the scene of Harris’ injury while Harris recollects the event in voiceover. This is Hell and Back Again‘s one major flaw; otherwise, Dennis’ film is masterfully constructed documentary using witty metaphoric editing techniques that bring to mind Sergei Eisenstein’s Strike.