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June 01, 2006

Citizen Soldiers Turn Filmmakers in Shattering Tribeca Winner 'War Tapes'

Honestly, I have not been so overwhelmed by some of the more acclaimed films to emerge from the Iraq War. The Oscar-nominated Occupation: Dreamland was, at best, an overearnest mess that took its day-in-the-life cues from the zingier, pulsating Gunner Palace, and James Longley's Sundance prize-winner Iraq in Fragments feels like three works-in-progress glued together with a certain arty smugness. However patronizing as it sounds, I do love that each film exists and admire their filmmakers for taking such grave risks to bring stories from Iraq to their audiences. I just wish the stories were better.

Another day at the office: Soldier/cameraman Mike Moriarty adds one more reel to The War Tapes (Photos: SenArt Films / Scranton/Lacy Films)

And just like that, along came The War Tapes (opening tomorrow in New York), Deborah Scranton's Tribeca triumph that transcends gimmickry--give cameras to a handful of New Hampshire National Guardsmen to document their one-year deployment in Iraq--to reveal the anguish, cynicism and humanity that has always threaded the most memorable war chronicles of film and literature. Think of the radioactive, stream-of-consciousness reportage of Michael Herr's Dispatches, or the bleak condemnation of Peter Davis's Hearts and Minds. Is Scranton's film that good? Time will tell, but when neither Scranton nor her subjects flinch from the blood- and money-spattered absurdity in the desert, and when the sting of violence acquiesces to glassy eyes and numb families, and everyone on screen is just a few palpable degrees from being someone else's victim, that darkness after the closing credits feels a little darker, and you do not remain seated because of exhaustion. Rather, you notice later that you were still with paralysis.

Dramatic pronouncements aside, the impact absolutely reflects Scranton's ethos and her subjects' commitment. "I gave my word that we would tell their story through their eyes, no matter where it took us, no matter what," Scranton told me the other day, revisiting the film with two of its three main subjects, Mike Moriarty and Zack Bazzi. "And I really wanted to get as close to the experience of war as possible: To climb inside and to feel it all around and share that with the audience."

And she got pretty close: As Scranton's troops preface their mission with dueling senses of duty and bravado, their earliest moments at Camp Anaconda ("the most attacked base in Iraq," one tells the viewer) yield to a swagger-shattering mortar attack. Footage from the centers of firefights interplays with graphic pictures of dead insurgents. Moriarty indicts even the nickel-and-dime economics of war, where KBR/Halliburton charges $28 for a plastic food plate and a popular Burger King franchise sprawls in the sand while Iraqi defense contractors drive vehicles without armor or windows.

Moreover, The War Tapes follows the experience at home, where Moriarty's wife, Bazzi's mother and third soldier Steve Pink's girlfriend wrangle with the terms of their separations. By bookending the film with their departures and eventual reunions, Scranton details a war that never seems to end. The onset of fatigue, temper and physical deterioration mark a conspicuous counterpoint to the men we were introduced to, whom these respective women cherished while knowing as well as anyone the heartbreaking truth that they and their families will never be the same.

The film acquires an additional resonance from its look: One-chip MiniDV cams turned out 800 hours of footage, some of it shockingly pristine considering the conditions under which its cameramen were rolling tape. "They mounted cameras on the dashboard of their Humvees, and their gun turrets, on their helmets and Kevlar," Scranton said. "But they knew how to work cameras. There were maybe a few times where I said try not to be backlit, or--remember, guys? I always used to bug you. 'Tip the shot of your face in the Humvee.' "

"Yes," Moriarty said.

"That was probably 'Deborah's Request Most Hated,' " Scranton said.

"Yeah," Moriarty said. " 'Don't tell me what just happened. Go narrate! Now! Go tell the camera.' "

War Tapes director Deborah Scranton shooting at New Jersey's Fort Dix

Naturally, under the circumstances, a prevailing visual aesthetic was not an especially urgent concern for any of the troops with cameras. Scranton praised their otherworldly devotion to logging and labeling tapes, staying in touch with her via instant messaging and taking the extra time to prepare for the day's shoot when not even their patrol vehicles remained consistent from day to day. "There was no plan," Moriarty said, who noted that zip ties became the go-to mount material when the desert heat melted the adhesive on duct tape. "The best way to make this thing as real as possible was to run that camera and act as though there was no camera. We couldn't plan ahead--and believe me, I wish we could. It would have been a lot safer mission if we could have planned ahead for a lot of things. But basically, you just take it as it comes. You go outside the wire, you do your thing, you run your camera, and what it catches is what happens. We did learn over time that you're not going to catch things on film if your camera's not running."

For all of its unbridled cynicism about everything from war profiteering to the texture of severed limbs to simple fate ("It's only a matter of time before our number is up," one soldier mutters in a moment of harrowing gravity), Scranton and the soldiers are careful to note The War Tapes was not intended as a resolutely political film. Nevertheless, that flavor persists in homilies and asides questioning the purpose and potential of the mission in Iraq--criticism of the president and vice-president so intense at times it is a wonder how it saw the light of day.

"Are the soldiers sophisticated?" Bazzi asked me rhetorically. "Do they have political thoughts? Yes. Are they preoccupied with those thoughts on the mission? No. It's always mission first, mission always."

Moriarty agreed. "We're thinking human beings," he said. "We have political beliefs. We have biases. ... But in the process of being thinking human beings, we all signed that dotted line knowing what our enlistment may entail. And even though you know what your enlistment may entail, there are a lot of things you haven't experienced until you've been over in Iraq and you've been shot at. What you may expect and what reality brings to life may be two totally different things. But in the end, regardless of all the details and the opinions and the disagreements and the whining and this and that, I think that every soldier would agree that the mission comes first."

In so many war docs, however, disillusionment is generally--almost by definition--the offspring of expectations' trysts with reality. But in its nuanced, humanizing honesty (not to mention the collaboration's immunity to exploitation), The War Tapes' disillusionment lingers less oppressively than that of the obvious confessionals peppering Occupation: Dreamland or even Errol Morris's otherwise brilliant The Fog of War. This alone is a feat worth recognizing--an achievement worth seeing. And you should see it, by the way. You will be hearing about it for years.

Posted by stvanairsdale at June 1, 2006 09:31 AM

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Posted by: Suliman at June 2, 2006 02:55 PM