comment #1

JLC says ...

I finally saw Restrepo on the National Geographic Channel and I completely disagree with your review. While it does offer the kind of "on the ground/you are there" point-of-view you describe, I got a very heavy feeling of hopelessness and futility from the film. It was almost Vietnam-esque in the way it showed how little difference (in the larger scheme of things) the sacrifices of these men ultimately meant. The meetings with the tribal elders, in particular, had a tremenous feeling of despair.

Maybe the film lacked political context, but in the way it was presented, I don't think it needed it.

comment #2

Vennard says ...

I agree JLC. Well put.

I wish The Tillman Story was among the nominees to, but if I have to choose between an archival/research doc vs. a verite one (esp one where the filmmakers were actually in the line of fire) there's no choice.

Also, is Waiting For 'Superman' the better film or better directed or is it just the most 'important' issue that was raised by documentarians this year?

I sometimes wonder what docs were like before they had to choose an orphaned issue and advocate it to get seen.

comment #3

Jeffrey Wells says ...

In a roundabout way it's selling the Afghanistan War. Get to know & respect the grunts = respect & support the war.

comment #4

CitizenKaned4Life says ...

No, those two ideas are not equivalent.

Not even in a roundabout way.

comment #5

japhy says ...

Agree with both JLC and Vennard. I think you are missing the point of "Restrepo" Jeff. It is not about politics. As Junger put it in his companion book "War," his attempts to document a platoon's life and experience in Afgthanistan was not an attempt to give context to America's involvement in that country or in any other conflict, to say what is right or wrong, but to simply portray young men's experience in combat and the residual damage to them on their return.
As the brother of a sibling in the Army who has seen 15 months of combat in Iraq and is currently doing a tour in Afghanistan, I can personally say that the depiction of what the men in this doc went through in comabt, and especially, what they are going through now that they are back is the most touching and realistic depiction I have seen done on film.
You dismissively saying the grunts have an "insular" "get it done" mentatlity misses the point of the documentary. I think Junger depicts in a direct and simple manner how each of the featured soldiers handles with the tragic/devastating emotional consequences of being "insular" and having been psychologically forced to adopt a "get it done" mentality. Each post rotation interview shows just how non-insular these young men actually are as they thoughtfully reflect on what they have done and seen.
I have been hoping for nominations if only so more Americans would gain awareness of the film, watch it and be offered an opportunity to consider the human consequences of a quiet war we don't know/hear enough of.
Junger could have done politcal context, lord knows he's spent the better part of a decade traveling the region, but instead set out to do an "insular" exploration of a single unit. That was his stated objective and every "fair minded" person I know who has seen it believes he did an incredibly powerful job with it.

comment #6

bigtheta says ...

No No jeff, "Get to know & respect the grunts" and feel the futility and loss even more.

comment #7

Chauncey says ...

"In a roundabout way it's selling the Afghanistan War. Get to know & respect the grunts = respect & support the war."

I fear for the future of our art, if this is where the "liberal" sensibility is headed these days. Sounds more like church.

comment #8

JR says ...

JLC pwned you, Jeff...

comment #9

Krillian says ...

I agree with the group. I caught it on DVD. You spend a year with the troops, getting to them, some get wounded or killed, defending this rock in the middle of nowhere, and you find out at the end they wound up abandoning the rock and the Taliban took it back over. Utter futility. And much more effective for it.

comment #10

The Thing says ...

You completely missed the point of the movie. While I also agree with JLC, I think that it's more about the "day in the life" aspect of the soldiers fighting out there. While most Americans care about why we're in Afghanistan and politics behind those reasons, the soldiers and their families don't. The only thing a soldier should do in combat is follow orders and survive, not worry about whether the reasons they're fighting are justified. Once you get soldiers disagreeing with the war, they stop fighting. And the soldiers know that if they don't convince themselves that what they're doing is right, they're going to let down a fellow soldier, and one of their friends will get hurt or killed, if not themselves. So, they do what they're told and try to survive as best as they can.

Just because there are (possibly) bad politics behind why those guys are over there in the first place doesn't mean every movie concerning itself with the war has to involve those. If they did make a Steve Schmidt like you said in your review, it doesn't have to center around the McCain campaign. If "Schmidt's relationship with his family and his dentist and his kids' homework and his visits to a local cafe and his dealings with the guy who mows the lawn" are interesting enough or convey what you're trying to, why bother adding politics to it? One does not require the other.

Finally, you need to wake the fuck up if actually believe if "Get to know & respect the grunts = respect & support the war." If you don't respect the people fighting, you're an asshole. I don't care what you think about the war (I'm personally against it), but the soldiers on the ground don't have a say in whether or not it gets fought. They're told to fight, so they fight. Blame politicians or generals for making the war, but at least respect and honor the men and women who have to fight it.

comment #11

bogiesghost says ...

I liked both Restrepo and The Tillman Story. Two different movies though. I can appreciate both for what they represent.

No worries though Jeff... The Tillman Story WILL be Oscar nominated.

comment #12

DiscoNap says ...

Wells is right, just look at PLATOON, the most overtly pro-Vietnam movie ever made.

comment #13

CanCan says ...

Interesting topping and discussion.

Both Jeff and JLC make good points i think. Some really might see Restrepo as pro war as the soldiers are pictured as semi heros but I suspect deep inside they would feel better about the war after seeing this nightmare. I also can`t imagine anyone signing for the army after seeing it. Far from it they might decide not to go...

The question is, is Restrepo great film-making or in some sense equivalent of crazy people risking their life's in extreme sports but would never make it to Olympics. those What makes it special other then those filmmakers risking their own life - and if nothing is taking risks enough to make a great movie?

comment #14

Jeffrey Wells says ...

Wells to naysayers: I didn't miss the point of Restrepo. You don't need a Masters in Film Studies from NYU to understand what the filmmakers were doing, what they achieved, their scheme, etc. I got it. But you guys don't seem to understand the hidden scheme that goes with befriending combatants in any war of any kind. The filmmakers brought an oblique linkage to their overall non-portrait of the war. These guys are okay, honorable, suffering, doing their best, etc. So how bad could the war be if it's being fought by right guys of this calibre? I guess you don't want to get it. All you want to know and feel is what the filmmakers want you to know and feel. The Restrepo grunts are/were good American guys doing the best they could in a helluva tough situation. News flash: The Saudi-funded radicals who orchestrated and/or engineered the destruction of the twin towers on 9.11 are not, by all accounts, in Afghanistan but Pakistan, and the Afghanistan War is nothing if not a mistaken and futile endeavor. You can't militarize or gun-barrel Afghanis into rejecting Taliban rule and adopting an American-like democratic system. And I OBJECT to being shown the Restrepo grunts' situation without being provided with a fair and honest assessment of the overall political and tactical and long-range particulars. We are not exactly the "bad guys" over there, but we most certainly are foreign invaders who will sooner or later give up and go home. We are trying to stave off Taliban tyranny, but we're providing very little in the way of long-range security and stability for the residents of that country, largely because we can't -- we don't have the power. And I'm sure there are tens of thousands of Afghanis who loathe and despise us for our presence over there. I understand the journalistic law about how one is not allowed to make analogies to the Germany army during World War II, but try to imagine a Restrepo-type doc about any soldiers fighting in any war or campaign that you don't happen to admire or agree with. Try to imagine, say, a Restrepo-type doc about a good old platoon of amiable, likable, hangin'-in-there Japanese troops involved in the 1937 Nanking massacre. A doc, I mean, that gives you no context, no view of any kind about the alleged atrocities or strategy or motives...nothing. A doc that just shows you the day-to-day grind, fortifying the perimeter, eating those rations, moving along, killing and raping some noncombatants but you know, heh-heh, war is hell and we had to kill a cow for food the other day and we sure do miss our families! You can depict any soldiers in any campaign in a Restrepo-type way. Invaders are losing the war/ have been losing the war/ will always lose the war. Restrepo's refusal to provide context means that it's using a compassionate portrait of combatants to soft-sell the conflict, which is to say in an oblique and roundabout way. Thanks but no thanks.

comment #15

japhy says ...

Jeff, I think the most interesting undercurrent of your argument (and I'm trying to shake off the image of an "aw shucks" interview with a Japanese officer after taking part in a be-heading contest in Nanking) is the question of whether ANY war film can be anything other then some form of propaganda.
You walked out of "Restrepo" feeling one way, perhaps a confirmation of the ideas you had going in. I walk out realizing I had vaguely approved of the war using the ol "if we leave and create a vacuum what then?" theory and now feel pretty much the same way you do about the situation.
I'm having trouble thinking of a war film that can't be seen as a propaganda tool in some fashion, either ra ra go America or war is hell. Clint had to make two Iowa Jima movies just to attempt it.
If "Restrepo" DID cover the Saudi angle or the fact the guys we really want are all in Pakistan and funding the locals to fight us...would that lift the story? Wouldn't that add even more of a "oh these poor GI's dying at the whims of geo-politics" feeling?
The politics are always there, the audience brings them to a war film, no matter whether the director/writer overtly includes or consciously excludes. Junger tried to tell a story of men in combat, in the same way he tried to tell a story of men in a storm...the enviromental causes of the storm don't matter to him as much as the men's reaction to the storm.

comment #16

The Thing says ...

Jeff, I just want to point you to The Deer Hunter - there is absolutely no political context anywhere in that movie. You are given a group of guys, living their lives, go to Vietnam, go through a lot of shit, come back home and deal with that shit. There's no message of "should we have even gone there in the first place?" or "what are we really fighting for over there?" or "why did Johnson want to keep fighting the war?" overtly placed in that movie. You feel sympathy for those men, just as you feel sympathy for the men in Restrepo. But coming out of that film, I didn't feel like I should look back and agree with the war. In fact, it only solidified my feeling that it was wrong from the start.

That said, Japhy is right in saying that any war movie is propaganda, whether it's meant to be or not. But don't hate on the movie because you feel like it's trying to push an agenda you disagree with, when it really isn't trying to. It's a human drama, not a political message.

comment #17

artblundell says ...

Jeff, you "OBJECT to being shown the Restrepo grunts' situation without being provided with a fair and honest assessment of the overall political and tactical and long-range particulars."

But is that really the film's job?

How can a verite piece deal honestly with subjective issues like politics and tactics?

Not every documentary has to be the sole source for responsible citizens to educate themselves about the war their country is fighting.

In 1.5 hours, a movie can't tell every story, and if the movie gets too preachy the audience won't let it tell any story...

While you may find the movie pro-war, there are many fair-minded people that come away with the opposite impression.

Check out the antiwar website:

http://original.antiwar.com/giraldi/2011/01/12/a-look-on-the-wild-side/

"Clearly, the presence of American soldiers might have made logistical problems for the Taliban but it also turned more Afghans into enemies as a result of the complete cultural insensitivity and ignorance of the US troops. This is what I took away from the film and this is why I think that Restrepo, by virtue of its dispassionate presentation of a terrible reality, demonstrates that the United States will never succeed at anything in Afghanistan and that continued presence there will only guarantee more killing and instability. That makes it one of the best antiwar films that I have ever seen, a complete indictment of a failed and ruinous policy without having to hammer the pulpit to get its message across."

comment #18

Emily says ...

Is it the topic--war--that makes Jeff demand context? Or is it that Restrepo is a documentary and they are not allowed to be art; they must be journalism?

Do Deer Hunter and Platoon (and for that matter Das Boot and Letters from Iwo Jima--which both btw portray "the enemy" in a sympathetic light) get a pass on context?

Or is Jeff's problem that we are still in Afghanistan so every discussion has to be at heart an advocacy debate on the objectives and strategies of the war?

As an earlier poster asked, do all documentaries now have to be advocacy pieces on a current event to be valid?

And what are the limits of context?

The personal narratives of the kids are window dressing to the "context" in Waiting for Superman--which is that teachers unions and firing bad teachers are the pimary obstacles to decent public education. A partial, and some would say misleading, truth. But one that has generated national public debate where there was none.

If Guggenheim tried to pack in all the layers of what's wrong with the public schools into one film, it would be unwatchable.

comment #19

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