Review of Citizen Soldier (2016) by Lyn M — 06 Aug 2016

As a lifelong antiwar activist and someone who lost a brother during the Vietnam War, Citizen Soldier was a hard film to watch. Fortunately, one of the beauties of the film is that it doesn't take an overt political stance. Instead, it attempts simply to bear witness to the direct experience of the soldiers of the Oklahoma National Guard as it was, hair-raisingly filmed live and thoughtfully recounted afterwards. This approach left room for me to remain faithful to both my politics and the sacrifice of my brother. Interpretation is left to the soldiers and the viewers; indeed, one of the driving motifs is how the soldiers make that meaning.

However I might feel about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, this film inspired compassion and respect for the way these men (there were no women) faced and executed the duty they chose to embrace. The scene in which they retrieve the remains of a fallen friend at extreme risk, hefting the body bag together step by careful step up a cliffside, is almost unbearable. This incident, treated with dignity and reverence by the filmmakers, calls to mind the keening of Achilles over his beloved slain Patroclus in the Iliad.

Except the song that accompanies the men climbing into the helicopter to embark on their mission, the music lends a quiet, even transcendent poignance to the vast and austere landscape and grim action. There are no glorious trumpets and kettledrums. The stunning visuals themselves are part of the beauty of the film. Both the music and the cutaways to the unit after the war blunt the edge and momentum of the immersive live footage, but at the same time they provide breathing room, and the scenes of recollection heighten the stark dialectic between the men's ordinary lives as citizens and extraordinary lives as soldiers, which is an organizing thread of the drama.

This film allowed me to appreciate more deeply and immediately what our troops went through in Afghanistan, and still suffer as a consequence, as well as to perceive with even greater clarity what a tragedy and shame was this war.