Review of Restrepo (2010) by Diogo S — 01 Jun 2011

"Is there any man here that does not know that the seed of war in the modern world is industrial and commercial rivalry?" - Woodrow Wilson.

Tim Hetherington, a British photojournalist, and Sebastian Junger, an American journalist, direct their first film, a documentary following a platoon in Afghanistan. The filmmakers actually risked their lives to follow the soldiers around for a year and captured some pretty remarkable footage. They don't interact with the soldiers at all and instead let them tell their story to the cameras through interviews and of course through their actions with each other and on the battlefield. The footage is surprisingly raw and real.

Restrepo is shot at a very personal level. The camera never intrudes on the soldiers during their work, and thank God considering some of the harrowing things they go through in this movie. This film hardly even feels like a documentary in the sense of what we think of documentary today. It is filled with interviews, but the bulk of the movie is truly documenting the lives of these soldiers. We get to see all sides of the emotional spectrum that can be afflicted through trauma. We get to look at how different people cope with such horrors as are experienced in this film. And it is all through such respectful eyes. I never once thought, 'Wow, they should really stop filming this.' Every moment of the film feels so important and the fact that all this was so clearly and eloquently caught on camera is astounding.

The unequivocally greatest thing about this film is the fact that it has absolutely no political agenda. It really has no alternative motive other than telling the story of these incredibly brave soldiers. The film only seeks to honor the brave men who served our country in the most dangerous area imaginable. This film isn't for the political leaders responsible for the war. It isn't for the military commanders that send these soldiers into battle. This movie is for the soldiers themselves. It is a true soldier's film in every sense. It has a very stern focus on the individual. It makes such an important point out of this aspect that it could have possibly gone even further. There are a lot of men in this platoon and thus we don't get to know any one person particularly well. We get to know the platoon well as a whole and how each man interacts with his fellow soldiers and how they all deal with loss and tragedy. Each individual soldier in this movie is important and the movie strives to show how meaningful that is. It is a remarkably important aspect of the film.

You won't see many documentaries like this, and there's probably a good reason for this. The kind of footage captured in Restrepo isn't easy to get and you have to be just as brave as the soldiers themselves if you are to accompany them into battle to document their bravery. But thankfully when the opportunity to get such unforgettable footage arose, it was all put together extremely well. This is not an easy film to watch, but in the end it is so remarkably worth it.

Recent (say in the last ten years) Fiction films about war, BLACK HAWK DOWN for example, have taken the same approach this films takes. The men are men doing a "job" and earn our respect on that level. The fact they do "the job" is what earns our respect. The fact that War isn't your usual job is not questioned, not by the filmmakers or by the men doing the job.

Part of the job is not to question the job and you don't do a lot of debating while you're either hiding or shooting to save your own life. That's more of a Hollywood idea of war than reality anyway it would seem.

This keeps the film from being political, so doesn't alienate people who are pro or con to the specific war the movie might be about.

So this fits into our modern war film approach comfortably on that level. Does it need more than a slice of life approach to be fascinating and tension filled? Not really, if it's done well enough and this film is very well done. The men interviewed talk about being disturbed but they way they talk is real, one guy who can't really sleep at all since actually smiles through his this part of his interview, hiding his horror behind telling something he finds embarrassing. This is so different than the "acted" stories of war we get in movies traditionally and such.

Could the film have let us know some history to the valley the men are stuck in or try to let us in tactically a little more from a distance. Probably could have, though bits of this are filled in by the troops as they are the new group in the area and some past mistakes haunt them and they repeat some of those same mistakes. War isn't really a clean job after all or a nice one.

The central battle has very little footage, obviously the cameramen were hiding for their lives so that section is a series of very very close up talking heads, the professionally detached talking heads of those involved and their armor does crack as they get into it, the little actual footage of the battle shows the real raw reactions.

This is making the best of a bad situation for the filmmakers, but it does rob us the horrid experience of the initial attack.

No enemy dead are shown at all in the film, only some collateral damage victims. This, it could be argued, is slanted a bit from the filmmakers point of view, or of course is just a limitation of their "embedded" status with their troops. Perhaps, the film suggests, they rarely see the enemy up close in this particular valley fight. Perhaps, but they aren't shown for whatever reason. Likewise there is scant footage of some of those U.S. troops who die when they are alive. This does also take away some emotional connection. And frankly when everyone wears the same uniform and has the same haircut it does get confusing at a few points as to who is who.

Some of the footage is very crudely recorded, shaky/grainy to a distracting degree--to be expected, but don't sit too close in the theater. It's edited and assembled very well, if there is/are movie tricks, and certainly there are, in terms of "faking" reaction shots or re-ordering events to make it more dramatic---it's seamlessly done. It all feels honest.

It's a very very good slice of life and puts you there with the men. And though very young they do mostly come off as men. That's all it does and it does it perfectly. There is no "ulimate" film on this war because, of course it's still going on. This film would seem to suggest that it's not going to end with us, "on top" but it doesn't say one way or the other. If you want to see our volunteer army in action in one specific area for one year, there hasn't been anything better previous to this film or in any of the Iraq movies, docu and fiction, done so far.

Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington's year dug in with the Second Platoon in one of Afghanistan's most strategically crucial valleys reveals extraordinary insight into the surreal combination of back breaking labor, deadly firefights, and camaraderie as the soldiers painfully push back the Taliban.

British director Tim Hetherington died in Libya from an RPG while working .