Restrepo: War’s Daily Grind

Scan page 8

S Storm” fame, and co-director/photographer Tim ebastian Junger of “Into the Wild’ and “The Perfect Hetherington were imbedded in 2007 through 2008 with the U. S. Army’s Second Platoon in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley, a Taliban stronghold and one of the most dangerous places in the country.

The boyish and playful soldiers deployed to the Valley in the filmmakers’ documentary, “Restrepo,” are a tight-knit group under 35, who turn deadly serious readying for, or being under, an attack.

The film follows them when they are weighed down by huge, heavy backpacks, belts loaded with gear, and weapons, as they trudge up steep, rocky mountainsides. We watch as they set up do-it-yourself barricades of chicken-wire-reinforced cylinders of thick cardboard. Somehow, they seem unconcerned that they could be attacked before they finish what at first seems like flimsy protection until they fill the structure with shovels-full of dirt. These procedures must be repeated each time they move to a new outpost.

They are filthy; their camo-cloth covered helmets, torn. They look exhausted. Once the barricades are completed, a housekeeping chore is stressed: the daily burning of “poop.” We may bomb your villages to rubble, kill civilians, terrorize your wives and children, but, hey, we leave none of our shit behind!

Early on, Restrepo, a favorite among the men, is killed. He had been their entertainer—cracking jokes, playing the guitar, and singing. The filmmakers use a lot of footage showing flashbacks of Restrepo, and after his death, his grieving buddies.

The men get orders to set up another outpost a mile away. Hetherington filmed the drudgery involved in this endeavor—the slow and careful pace while under attack by automatic weapons and RPGs (we never see the “enemy”). Once secured, they name the outpost Restrepo in his honor (as is the film). Helicopters maneuver through RPG fire to rescue the wounded and airlift the dead—scenes reminiscent of those witnessed during the Vietnam War.

Plumes of white smoke and fiery blasts mark a vast landscape not unlike the Sierra Nevada range or the Northern California wilderness against which the soldiers appear small, vulnerable, and insignificant. One even asks, “What are we doing here?”

The soundtrack captures the songs of birds. We are aware that their little lives will go on, while over a hundred-thousand soldiers, wreaking the forces of death and destruction on indigenous humans, have invaded their territory.

In over 150 or more feet of edited film, Junger kept a scene of a mistaken hit on civilians. A few adults and children were killed or wounded. We witness the family’s grief and anger towards the Americans. The offer of money as compensation only intensifies their emotions. Also, when the soldiers kill a wounded cow, its owner refuses both money and food. Money may buy another cow, if they can persuade someone to sell; food will run out whereas a cow is a constant source of milk and cheese.

There are scenes of Capt. Dan Kearney at shuras with Afghan elders—tall, thin, elegant old men whose long beards and wispy hair beneath their turbans are red with henna. One elder tries to figure out how to insert a straw into a juice box as Kearney explains that the Americans are there to help them get rid of the Taliban, who are making them risk their lives by killing Americans for the equivalent of five dollars while they hide out in the hills. The elders say that they are terrified that they’ll be killed if they don’t.

Kearney tries to convince the skeptical elders that working with the Americans is better: Once the Taliban is gone, they will build an asphalt road from their village to Kandahar. Goods will be transported and villagers will make money. He asks them to tell him of any suspicious men and/or munitions found in the village. In other words—to spy.

Junger interviewed Dan Kearney and a few soldiers when their term ended. One baby-faced soldier who suffers from PTSD grew up on a farm in Oregon, where he killed farm animals for food. Another, who smiled throughout the interview, says he takes multiple sleeping pills to shut off horrific images that haunt him, but fails. So, he does not sleep in order to avoid nightmares.

Outside of filming Kearney’s pep-talks—rah-rah-rah for democracy and America—Junger and Hetherington don’t take sides but just tell it like it is. The herkyjerky shots from hand-held cameras, jumping from an outdoor scene to a close-up of a face, to a cell phone image, a sleeping form on a cot, and Junger’s barelyheard off-camera remarks, are not only disconcerting, but also create a feeling of detachment.

Hetherington’s film work is outstanding when he pulls back to capture the breathtakingly beautiful terraced mountainsides, the stone homes built into them, the quiet peacefulness of the village where robed men and women go about their business and bareheaded children romp and play—scenes that make us very aware of the wrongness of our being there. n