Mililani Screening War Documentary
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Del.icio.usThe winner of the 2010 Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize for a Documentary is coming to Mililani this week, bringing the war in Afghanistan directly to the screen with no sugar coating or political agenda.
Photographer for Restrepo, Tim Hetherington, admitted he goes deep into long-term projects like this one, opening himself up emotionally:“I go the whole way, I give myself to it, because in doing that I think that I take you, the viewer, to the furthest extremes that you just can’t go ... I will go to the furthest ends necessary to achieve that.”
Did he ever. Premiering Friday at Mililani Stadium 14, this 94-minute film by Hetherington and Vanity Fair writer Sebastian Junger (author of The Perfect Storm) has them embedded with the soldiers of Second Platoon, Battle Company, as they fought to build and maintain a 15-man outpost in Afghanistan’s remote Korengal Valley in 2008. Named after a platoon medic who was killed in action, the film is a raw presentation of war as it’s lived and felt by soldiers - from backbreaking labor and deadly fire-fights to the typical boredom, jokes and camaraderie of deployment.
In other words, it feels real because it is real.
“The country’s in a really painful place right now, about this war and politically, and part of that pain comes out of the fact that it’s a very divided country,” Junger explained,“and what I was really moved by is that the soldiers are not divided - they’re not Democrats or Republicans over there - everyone else is. The only people who are not (political) in this country as far as I can see are the soldiers who are fighting for us. While they’re there, they don’t care. I wish (people here) who are being protected by those guys could incorporate some of their spirit of brotherhood.”
Time spent there wasn’t all positive, however.“When I came back, I was really kind of snappy, and really on edge,” Junger said. “I changed in some very profound and positive ways. But for a while I was just short-tempered and irritable. I wouldn’t say it was PTSD, but it was definitely an effect of the experience.
“I was also very emotional and would get choked up about stuff really easily. I mean, that’s a good thing, particularly for men because they don’t reach that place in themselves very easily.”
To experience the film and see just what Hetherington and Junger mean, visit consolidatedtheatres.com for Restrepo show times.
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