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Bodies of Evidence: New Documentaries on Iraq War Veterans

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Bodies of Evidence: New Documentaries on Iraq War Veterans Bodies of Evidence New Documentaries on Iraq War Veterans by Susan L. Carruthers e's a villain or a hero; spat upon or Retrieving these women from the Penta- and Sommers such wrangling is rather spitting. He's an accessory to war gon's memory hole is central to McLagan beside the point. Since women are already in H crimes; an antiwar crusader. He's a and Sommers's project. Male Army officers combat, the immediate issues are much tic-ridden time bomb; a paraplegic demon explain how they initially looked to female more practical ones about inadequate prior lover. He's a Vietnam veteran—of Holly- soldiers for a less "culturally insensitive" training and insufficient aftercare from a wood's imagination. And now he's joined by way to body search Iraqi women and to soft- Veterans Administration caught off guard a new generation of homecoming soldiers en the affront of house-to-house raids. In its by the appearance of an unexpected species back from Iraq and burdened with many of imagined form, women's service in these of claimant. As such, the film is less an argu- the same afflictions. Skirting the war zone in capacities would be "a neat thing to do"—a ment about women in combat than an favor of domestic drama, films like Irwin badge of distinction that merited a distinc- affecting portrait of women after combat. Winkler's Home of the Brave, Paul Haggis's tive mantle. Having "joked around" with the More meditative than didactic, it focuses on In the Valley ofElah, and Kimberley Peirce's idea of calling them "shield maidens" or the exhausting battles of daily life with the Stop-Loss have pitted dam- traumatized veteran as both aged returnees against an recipient and provider of indifferent citizenry that Documentary filmmakers gauge the human care, mothering young chil- doesn't know how to handle dren and ailing parents them and a rapacious mili- factor as emotionally and physically shattered alike. tary all too eager to channel veterans return from combat while others them back to the front. The opening sequence Along the way, they've courageously resist deployment to Iraq. establishes a mood of uneasy brought us an amputee Jen- pastoralism—tranquil tur- nifer Biel, a homicidal 50 Cent, and a trau- bulence. On a country lane matized Ryan PhilHppe. "amazons," the architects of this policy hit in Arkansas a fawn falters to a standstill on the appellation "lioness." The idea was before scampering away from the camera's These narrative features have been sup- not, they stress, to put women into combat. opaque attention. Cut to a lake where a tur- plemented by a profusion of documentaries "But did battle come to them on occasion?," tle swims, oblivious to a sturdy blonde tak- that present viewers not with actors whose one officer rhetorically asks. "Yes, it did." ing aim at him with a rifle a few feet away. surgically perfected bodies have been artful- Exposing the not so neat consequences of With one shot, he's done for—ready to be ly prostheticized but with unglamorous this stretching of congressional strictures. scraped out and transformed into a plant young bodies, less perfect and less plastic in Lioness wiW doubtless galvanize both sides in pot, suggests one of the young woman's every way. Real people, in real pain. Docu- the should they/shouldn't they debate about companions, reaching to put the bourbon mentaries of this kind aren't a new addition women in the military. But for McLagan back on ice. Thereafter, Lioness works to to the Iraq war canon. Early exemplars, like redeem its central protagonist, Specialist Jon Alpert and Matthew O'NeiU's Baghdad Shannon Morgan, from the hard-living red- ER and Patricia Foulkrod's The Ground neck stereotype with which she's initially Truth (both released in 2006), followed hard Films Reviewed in This Article encumbered. on the heels of combat-focused documen- With her lumbering big girl's gait, fresh taries that began to appear in 2004. Over the Lioness Directed by Meg McLigan and Daría Sommers. tattoo, and choppy, bleached hair. Shannon past year, however, their number has DVD, color. 82 mins., 2008. Distributed by Room 11 turns out to be as true of heart as she is of mounted steadily: the wounded soldier now Productions, 455 Centra] Park West, #3B, New York, aim. Shown in close-up, her face wavers an obsessive focus of filmmaking about {or New York 10025, phone (646) 734-3374, email intiMííilionessthefilm.com. with uncertain emotion. Eyes thickly around) the war. rimmed with dark pencil glitter with what Of the recent additions to this genre, Body of War: might be merriment or the blink of unshed Meg McLagan and Daria Sommers's Lioness The True Story of an Anti-Hero tears. It takes a moment to recognize this proves the most compelling in sensibility Produced and directed by Ellen Spiro and Phil young woman, in the grips of full-blown Donahue. DVD, color, 87 mins., 2008. Distributed and subject matter, Introducing a hitherto by Docurama, www.docuraina.com. PTSD, as an adult version of the shyly smil- unknown character: the female U.S. combat ing girl seen in home video sitting at the veteran. Since women are formally debarred Breaking Ranks piano and bouncing on a trampoline—a Produced by Trish Dolman, Leah Mallen and from fighting, their deployment in front- Tracey Friesen; directed by Michelle Mason. DVD, child abandoned by parents who didn't line roles necessarily can't be, and isn't, offi- color, 56 mins., 2006. Distributed by the National want her and adopted by grandparents cially acknowledged. Nor has it been tackled Film Board of Canada, www.ntb.ca. whose love Shannon reciprocates with a by documentary filmmakers, a point Lioness quality of awed reverence. Anxious lest she Fighting for Life underscores when it shows its five female Directed by Terry Sanders. DVD, color, 89 mins., add to their store of worry, she's incapable protagonists watching a History Channel 2007. Distributed by Truly Indie, of doing otherwise. Even at a safe spectatori- special about the battle for Ramadi in which www.truiyindie.com. al remove, it's impossible to watch her take several of them fought. Nowhere visible in this to the bills, loaded gun in hand, without Meeting Resistance guts-and-glory production, they respond with Directed by Steve Connors and Molly Bingham. shuddering. "I think she'll be alright in indignant disbelief to an excision from the DVD, color, 84 mins., 2007. Distributed by First time," her mom remarks with weathered historical record that feels entirely deliberate. Run Features, www.ftrstrunfeatures.com. stoicism. "She's a strong girl." 26 CINEASTE, Winter 2008 A "Lioness Team" of .il Meg McLagan and Daria Sommers' feature documentary. Lioness. No doubt. But Shannon's strength never- breeze with her uncle Glenn, a Vietnam vet who S mediating figures, Vietnam veter- theless buckles under the weight of what's counsels against introspection. "Our freedoms" ans also make an appearance in Phil happened to her and what she herself has weren't won by men asking questions, he insists, A Donahue and Ellen Spiro's Body of done: her own implication In the loss of part without elucidating which freedoms or War and Michelle Mason's Breaking Ranks, of herself. Other lionesses reckon with their which men he has in mind. Instead, the trick about U.S. military personnel seeking asy- role in violating Iraqi homes. "I felt like the is to distract the mind by busying the hands; lum in Canada to avoid deployment, or Gestapo," Anastasia Breslow confides to her his preferred busyness being the production redeployment, in Iraq. Focusing on four of diary. But Shannon, having found herself in of hand-carved and painted Christmas orna- the more prominently reported conscien- a firefight alongside Marines who first left ments that transform the trailer park into a tious objectors (Jeremy Hinzman, Brandon her exposed and then left her behind, carries place of delight: a magical illumination that Hughey, loshua Key, and Kyle Snyder), this a weightier hurden: the certain knowledge of gestures towards a kind of transcendence. advocacy documentary enquires how they having killed an uncertain number of came to enlist; how they came to reconsider; Iraqis—one of whom she subsequently how they came to Canada—and whether dragged on her poncho to the side of the they'll be permitted to stay. Their case is road for disposal. Not very much humanity pressed by Jeffry House, a human rights in that, she notes. And though she rehearses lawyer who fled the draft some thirty years the familiar soldier's formula of kill or he earlier. But the Canadian legal system proves killed, still she struggles to find moral con- unreceptive to his argument that, since the viction in this necessitarian logic. "I don't war violates international law, the men he want to go to hell," Shannon muses, and represents are political refugees who risk killing a human isn't the same as taking aim long prison sentences, or even the death at a turtle, a squirrel, a bird—the targets that penalty, should they be deported to the U.S. have made her a crack shot. Faced with Made two years ago. Mason's film ends with another human, the finger hesitates on the the initial rejection of Hinzman and trigger; conscience circles the corpse. "I Hughey's cases. (Since then, higher Canadian know God forgives everything you do," she courts have also rejected Hinzman's appeals, ventures towards the end of the film.
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