Restrepo & Korengal (Sebastian Junger et al., 2010/14)

[Napier]

I couldn't find a topic for this, used the search function. I heard Sebastian Junger talking about making this on NPR Wednesday. You have too have balls of steel to embed yourself in the Korengal Valley with U.S. troops, to make a documentary. Has anyone seen this yet.

[Tom Hagen]

I saw it at Sundance. There's some truly amazing footage in the film, almost overwhelming to a degree. It is hard to articulate how I felt about the film as cinema, but as a first-person document of combat, it is absolutely stunning.

As an aside on the heart and minds front, there is a brilliant sequence in the film that features a discussion (through an interpreter) between a hopelessly clueless U.S. commander and a cluelessly hopeless group of local elders. This little scene illuminates so brilliantly the gulf that exists between American and the Islamic world on any number of issues; it's like it came right out of a Tom Friedman column.

[HistoryProf]

Watched this tonight and it struck me as far more a study of the fraternity soldiers develop together than the war itself. The experiences are the catalyst to that relationship which will last their lifetimes. Much as how WWII vets still will get together with men from their units at reunions and declare that their wives don't know them as well as those guys do, and they haven't seen some in 60 years.

I just finished the first two installments of Rick Atkinson's Liberation Trilogy (Army at Dawn and Day of Battle) on WWII in Africa and then Italy, and I think that colored my feelings about this. I literally finished Day of Battle this afternoon, reading about battalions losing 80% of their men trying to cross the Rapido river, misguided airmen who killed hundreds in what he terms "fratricide" - a problem I never knew was so appallingly pervasive in that war - and an innumerable litany of other instances of death and extremes of deprivation in a relentless march up the boot to Rome...where they rested for a day and then moved north towards the Po Valley.

So with all that in mind, part of me felt like "is that it?" with the footage of a couple of firefights and two casualties. I know its a matter of perspective, and I know that any life is precious and i'm not trying to minimize it, but I just didn't get the "war is hell" vibe from this I was expecting. I worry that it's my own desensitization via the hundreds of books I've read about the past....but I also know you couldn't pay me enough to spend a single day in that Valley.

In the end, I think it's a fascinating film, and one everyone should see just to understand that yes, there is a war going on over there. But it strikes me as odd how different War is now even compared to Vietnam. yet, as the 2nd post notes, so many things do stay the same - most especially the chasm of misunderstanding between the natives and the soldiers. The disregard one had for the "Hearts and Minds" reply from his mate was disconcerting....but who is anyone to judge them?....I don't know....a lot of mixed emotions from this one for me.

[Lemmy Caution]

What struck me was how young the soldiers were, with the junior officers barely older.
I guess I'm just getting middle-aged.
One drawback was that I lost track of who was who, especially when out of uniform (and helmet). The dealings with the locals and elders were really troubling, as neither side had any idea how to deal with the other.

I definitely got a sense of how pointless holding the valley was and how far removed from American security. Also, how pointless the overall war was.

I kept wondering where the local rebels got all of their armaments from and how they could afford them. They were engaging the US outpost on a daily basis. Then again, I was reading recently that that it cost something like $200K to keep an American soldier in the Afghan field for a year, and the writer posited that if even just 10% of that got skimmed off and ended up in the hands of the US opponents, that it would be enough to support 5 rebels for a year. And it has been widely reported that some of the security contractors merely pay off the Taliban not to attack the convoys they are protecting. Etc.
But I'm wandering from the film.
Overall, it's a powerful piece, though I wasn't satisfied with the lack of a broader context.

[brendanjc]

I strongly recommend watching this short film from the same creative team about Sal Giunta. He appeared in Restrepo and had since won the Medal of Honor.

[Napier]

Thanks for the excellent link, brendanjc. Badass of the Week did a great write up on Sal as well.

[warren oates]

Korengal is quite good in more or less exactly the same way that Restrepo was. Which shouldn't be a surprise as almost all of the footage comes from filming done at around the same time. I haven't seen Restrepo since it first came out but for every other bit of footage that felt new in this film, there were moments that were echoes of what we'd seen before. Which is definitely not a problem for me. I always felt like the first film could have gone on a few more hours and I would have loved to see the Frederick Wiseman version of something like this. Because the real effect of both of these films is in the individual details of their day to day experience and the voices of the soldiers speaking for themselves.

[jindianajonz]

Here's a brief writeup on Korengal that I stumbled across. I think I may have to track these films down.

[warren oates]

Korengal Blu-ray coming in early September.