Hello, all! In yesterday’s penultimate write-up for THE HURT LOCKER, I said [more than once] how the film strove to achieve a certain degree of authenticity… and didn’t quite get there. Since today’s film is the last “official” recommendation in this quasi series of mine, it seemed almost necessary to end on a particularly accurate note… and it doesn’t get a good deal more accurate than a documentary. While some documentaries can err on the side of self-aggrandizement or pop culture fetishism – even becoming propaganda in some instances – there are some that feel a greater duty to honor the reality of their subject matter. RESTREPO is one of those, and that fact is evident even in the trailer, which is embedded below.
It could be a bit of a cheat to include a documentary in this series of films. If that’s the case, then mea maxima culpa, I suppose… it isn’t as if there wasn’t a spate of documentaries to be released on the subject of the War on Terror, tho’. Some of them, like THE HORNET’S NEST and to a lesser extent ONLY THE DEAD, are actually fairly decent. I would argue that they all informed the movies that were released afterward, so I feel obliged to recommend the documentary that I believe informed them [or at least was partly responsible for their being greenlit in the first place].
Given the plethora of videos available on sites like YouTube and elsewhere showing things like A-10s supporting troops in heavy contact, or FLIR footage from Apache helicopters, or just jihadi wackadoos blowing themselves up, it’s almost amazing that a documentary that takes its time quite like RESTREPO does was ever quite so successful as it was. It even spawned a worthwhile follow-up that also is set in the Korengal Valley, entitled KORENGAL.
Although this documentary [and the outpost the troops are defending] was named after PFC Juan Restrepo, a medic who had been killed earlier in the campaign, one of the more immediate moments of the film is found after SSG Rougle is killed when he and others in his element come into heavy contact with the enemy. The reactions of other soldiers – some shown immediately after and others during the interviews conducted with those who returned from the campaign – are more compelling than anything dreamt up by the folks in Hollyweird. There’s no need for some soaring soundtrack with string music intended to provoke a specific emotional response, nor any need to point out how good NCOs are the glue that hold a company together… it’s just raw and real, and thus all the more profoundly affecting.
I don’t want to spend an awful lot of time addressing the material in this documentary because doing so might diminish the full emotional impact of whatever parts you might respond to on a visceral, emotional level; however, I do want to share the aforementioned scene, so I’ve embedded it here.
[Apologies for the (Portuguese?) subtitles. Regardless, at approximately 3:00 into the clip, the reaction of the CPL (I believe; can’t really make out his rank) eclipses the best that Hollyweird has to offer in terms of raw emotional import… and the rest of the clip (archival footage and interviews alike) is just as powerful.]
There is plenty to appreciate about this documentary, from the way it details the efforts of US soldiers [CPT Dan Kearney, in particular] to establish some kind of working relationship with the villagers stuck between the US forces and the Taliban, to how it doesn’t try to sensationalize any of the action depicted on-screen. In fact, a good portion of the screen time is devoted to interviews and the troops killing time [no pun intended]. It all reinforces the old maxim that war is a bore, punctuated by moments of sheer terror. As an aside, it’s necessary to point out that one of the folks responsible for this documentary, British photojournalist Tim Hetherington, was killed by either a mortar or RPG while filming for another project in Libya. Obviously, war isn’t hell solely for the soldiers fighting it, but for any noncombatants who are too close to the action. This documentary does as good a job as any of making the viewer qualify for that latter category, and therefore is as good a film as any to conclude this series. Here’s hoping I managed to recommend at least a couple of war films you hadn’t seen… just in case I didn’t, however, I’ll be sharing those that didn’t make the cut when I was first brainstorming the list of films that did. Thanks for reading, and enjoy!
Other films recommended:
[Day 1 - KINGDOM OF HEAVEN (Director's Cut); Day 2 - GLADIATOR; Day 3 - TROY; Day 4 - SPARTACUS; Day 5 - BRAVEHEART; Day 6 - MASTER AND COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD; Day 7 - GLORY; Day 8 - GODS AND GENERALS; Day 9 - GONE WITH THE WIND; Day 10 - CAPITAINE CONAN; Day 11 - ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT; Day 12 - GALLIPOLI; Day 13 - PATHS OF GLORY; Day 14 - SERGEANT YORK; Day 15 - DAS BOOT; Day 16 - SAVING PRIVATE RYAN; Day 17 - PATTON; Day 18 - CROSS OF IRON; Day 19 - SCHINDLER'S LIST; Day 20 - FURY; Day 21 - MASH; Day 22 - TAE GUK GI: THE BROTHERHOOD OF WAR; Day 23 - PLATOON; Day 24 - FULL METAL JACKET; Day 25 - GOOD MORNING, VIETNAM; Day 26 - WE WERE SOLDIERS; Day 27 - DR. STRANGELOVE; Day 28 - RED DAWN; Day 29 - THE HURT LOCKER]
It could be a bit of a cheat to include a documentary in this series of films. If that’s the case, then mea maxima culpa, I suppose… it isn’t as if there wasn’t a spate of documentaries to be released on the subject of the War on Terror, tho’. Some of them, like THE HORNET’S NEST and to a lesser extent ONLY THE DEAD, are actually fairly decent. I would argue that they all informed the movies that were released afterward, so I feel obliged to recommend the documentary that I believe informed them [or at least was partly responsible for their being greenlit in the first place].
Given the plethora of videos available on sites like YouTube and elsewhere showing things like A-10s supporting troops in heavy contact, or FLIR footage from Apache helicopters, or just jihadi wackadoos blowing themselves up, it’s almost amazing that a documentary that takes its time quite like RESTREPO does was ever quite so successful as it was. It even spawned a worthwhile follow-up that also is set in the Korengal Valley, entitled KORENGAL.
Although this documentary [and the outpost the troops are defending] was named after PFC Juan Restrepo, a medic who had been killed earlier in the campaign, one of the more immediate moments of the film is found after SSG Rougle is killed when he and others in his element come into heavy contact with the enemy. The reactions of other soldiers – some shown immediately after and others during the interviews conducted with those who returned from the campaign – are more compelling than anything dreamt up by the folks in Hollyweird. There’s no need for some soaring soundtrack with string music intended to provoke a specific emotional response, nor any need to point out how good NCOs are the glue that hold a company together… it’s just raw and real, and thus all the more profoundly affecting.
I don’t want to spend an awful lot of time addressing the material in this documentary because doing so might diminish the full emotional impact of whatever parts you might respond to on a visceral, emotional level; however, I do want to share the aforementioned scene, so I’ve embedded it here.
[Apologies for the (Portuguese?) subtitles. Regardless, at approximately 3:00 into the clip, the reaction of the CPL (I believe; can’t really make out his rank) eclipses the best that Hollyweird has to offer in terms of raw emotional import… and the rest of the clip (archival footage and interviews alike) is just as powerful.]
There is plenty to appreciate about this documentary, from the way it details the efforts of US soldiers [CPT Dan Kearney, in particular] to establish some kind of working relationship with the villagers stuck between the US forces and the Taliban, to how it doesn’t try to sensationalize any of the action depicted on-screen. In fact, a good portion of the screen time is devoted to interviews and the troops killing time [no pun intended]. It all reinforces the old maxim that war is a bore, punctuated by moments of sheer terror. As an aside, it’s necessary to point out that one of the folks responsible for this documentary, British photojournalist Tim Hetherington, was killed by either a mortar or RPG while filming for another project in Libya. Obviously, war isn’t hell solely for the soldiers fighting it, but for any noncombatants who are too close to the action. This documentary does as good a job as any of making the viewer qualify for that latter category, and therefore is as good a film as any to conclude this series. Here’s hoping I managed to recommend at least a couple of war films you hadn’t seen… just in case I didn’t, however, I’ll be sharing those that didn’t make the cut when I was first brainstorming the list of films that did. Thanks for reading, and enjoy!
Other films recommended:
[Day 1 - KINGDOM OF HEAVEN (Director's Cut); Day 2 - GLADIATOR; Day 3 - TROY; Day 4 - SPARTACUS; Day 5 - BRAVEHEART; Day 6 - MASTER AND COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD; Day 7 - GLORY; Day 8 - GODS AND GENERALS; Day 9 - GONE WITH THE WIND; Day 10 - CAPITAINE CONAN; Day 11 - ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT; Day 12 - GALLIPOLI; Day 13 - PATHS OF GLORY; Day 14 - SERGEANT YORK; Day 15 - DAS BOOT; Day 16 - SAVING PRIVATE RYAN; Day 17 - PATTON; Day 18 - CROSS OF IRON; Day 19 - SCHINDLER'S LIST; Day 20 - FURY; Day 21 - MASH; Day 22 - TAE GUK GI: THE BROTHERHOOD OF WAR; Day 23 - PLATOON; Day 24 - FULL METAL JACKET; Day 25 - GOOD MORNING, VIETNAM; Day 26 - WE WERE SOLDIERS; Day 27 - DR. STRANGELOVE; Day 28 - RED DAWN; Day 29 - THE HURT LOCKER]
