Bodies of Evidence New Documentaries on 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 —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 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 . But for McLagan back on ice. Thereafter, Lioness works to to the 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 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 , 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 (, 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 , 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 , the men he want to go to hell," Shannon muses, and represents are political 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. But though a deportation order for September absolving herself is another matter. 23, 2008 was stayed on September 22.) Adrift in a broken community where, as Through its four protagonists and their her mother points out, there's nothing much for lawyer, Breaking Ranks articulates a moral a woman to do but waitress. Shannon hovers Iraq combat veteran Shannon Morgan copes case against the war based on both the ille- in aimless limbo, hunting and shooting the with posttraumatic stress disorder in Lioness. gality of the resort to force and the day-to-

CINEASTE, Winter 2008 27 day ¡ll^3l!ties it entails. Seeking to raise anti-war wheelchair after the vows are exchanged. Offering this as a moment of catharsis, consciousness. Body of War adopts a less "Damn your big dress," Tomas mutters, not Donahue and Spiro nevertheless strive for a cerebral approach, preferring to tug ferociously quite playfully, as he yanks white satin from more redemptive ending—something to on the heartstrings. The angriest documen- the wheel-—a portent of tilings to come. By the leave us simultaneously shaken and stirred. tary the war has yet produced, it uses a twenty- end ofthe film, ten months later, the couple Uplift is necessary, and it's discovered at the five-year-old paraplegic veteran, Tomas has separated. While Brie seems as embittered scene of the crime to which Body of War Young, as the vessel for its rage: a soldier by Tomas's reluctance to engage emotionally as repeatedly returns: Capitol Hill. Throughout caught in the shoulder by an AK-47 round his incapacity to do so sexually, he greets the film, episodes from a year in Tomas's life five days into his tour and as antiwar activist are cross- left paralyzed from the chest cut with C-SPAN footage of down. That Tomas himself "That Tomas Young himself chooses to turn the October 2002 Senate chooses to turn his wheel- his wheelchair-bound body into a projectile debate on H.I. Resolution chair-bound body into a 114, authorizing war in Iraq. projectile aimed squarely at aimed squarely at the Bush Administration To an ominous drumbeat, the Bush Administration doesn't alleviate nagging concerns about names of the seventy-seven doesn't alleviate nagging aye voters are checked off; concerns about the manipu- the manipulativeness of Body of War." the war's spurious legitima- lativeness of this relentlessly tions subjected to withering corporeal polemic. scorn. But amid the villains, Donahue and bachelorhood bullishly. With the marriage Spiro identify a few good apples, none rosier Body of War takes pains to familiarize shrugged off as an infantilizing deferral of than Senator , whose impas- viewers with the workings, and refusals to independence, he consigns a wedding portrait to sioned refusal to grant the President war- work, of Tomas's body. A spinal cord injury, the closet along with his purple heart ("What making powers provides a counterpoint to as he points out and as we plainly observe, they give you for getting shot")—two equally the roll call of dishonor. doesn't just mean confinement to a wheel- distasteful mementos, martial and marital. chair, but constant pain, dizziness, It's only fitting, then, that Body nausea, and an inability to regulate of War should conclude by bring- body temperature and bodily ing its two heroes face to face, functions. All this is documented with Tomas carried up the Capitol without euphemism or averted steps by fellow antiwar veterans to gaze. We see Tomas's mother meet Senator Byrd. Frail of body catheterizing him: "Not the first but stout of ego, the elder states- time I've had your pee on my man appears less interested in hand," she reminds him when Tomas's experiences than in laud- things go awry. Meanwhile, hi.s ing his own valor in opposing the girlfriend (then wife) cleans out war. Unable to read the names of his "puke pan," and goes online to the "immortal twenty-three," Byrd seek advice about how accidental asks Tomas to help him recite the bowel movements might be roster of those who voted against avoided on their wedding day. the Iraq War resolution. In the With marriage looming, Tomas's final sequence, he abandons one penis—and its inability to rise to of his two canes to lean on the occasion—preoccupies Body Tomas's shoulder as they progress of War^s naming of the parts. Far down the corridor. "I guess we removed from the coy avoidance both have mobility issues," the of Forties homecoming melodra- young man gently quips before mas, Spiro and Donahue's docu- offering condolences on Byrd's mentary explicitly tutors its audi- recent bereavement. "Yes, my dar- ence in what Tomas wryly terms ling's an angel now," the Senator "the great big erection sidebar to sighs. And there, on a swelling this story." Counsel is sought and tide of sentimentality, it ends. offered from many sources Bobby Müller, a , The credits roll to the defiant recommends Viagra and a Caver- strains of 's "No ject injection, predicting that this More"—a song specially written combination will turn Tomas into for Body of War. But while the "an ace." Giggling hysterically, he full-throated refrain, "With his predicts, "They'll have to knock body he's saying/No more war" your dick down with a sledge- channels the film's mood, this hammer!"—a prophecy the cou- chorus imperfectly captures its ple register with doubtful alarm. politics. Spiro and Donahue give a wide berth in favor of a Unlike Homer's wedding to more limited critique of what's Wilma in The Best Years of Our wrong with this particular war: Lives, Tomas and Brie's marriage that it harms American bodies; occurs early in Body of War, deliv- claims American lives; costs ering neither the reassurance of a American dollars; damages Amer- ring perfectly pincered into place ican democracy; corrodes Ameri- nor the promise of a connubial can prestige—and does so with- out any credible evidence of Iraqi happy-ever-after. Instead, Brie's Iraq War veteran Tomas Young at an antiwar demonstration (top) voluminous gown catches in the and in Washington to meet with Senator Robert Byrd in Body of War. culpability. Moreover, this wrong-

28 CINEASTE, Winter 2008 headed war distracts attention and resources f the injured veteran serves as recruiting Warrior Care"—Sanders clearly intends no from the right war against America's real sergeant for the antiwar movement in irony. It's impossible to imagine this could enemies: the battle Tomas says he enlisted to I Body of War, Terry Sanders's documen- be the same place reprimanded in 2007 for light in a sui^e of patriotic fervor on September tary, Fighting for Life, mobilizes the same its unsanitary conditions, neglect, and mis- 13, 2001. Namely, the war in Afghanistan. figure to reverse effect: as a renewable management. Only once, when Tomas's mother consults resource for martial endeavor. Here we track Unerringly upbeat. Fighting for Life icasLialtics.org to check that another son the progress of a fresh cohort of students strives to have us feel good about all this suf- Mîrving in Iraq isn't among the day's fatalities, through their first year at the Uniformed fering. Despite its unflinching depiction of does Body of War register that Iraq—"a Services University medical school, while injured bodies, rarely does Sanders counte- country that had nothing to do with 9/11 "—is concurrently observing USU alumni at mili- nance despair as a permissible—or also a site of suffering. (The figure citetl, 31,000 tary hospitals in Bilad, central Iraq, and inevitable—response to catastrophic harm. civilian fatalities, now stands at between Ramstein, Germany. Made with support One surgeon briefly queries whether, on 88,733 and 96,466 according to the organiza- from the American Film t-oundation, corpo- coming round, a triple amputee will neces- tion Iraq Body Count.) But this fleeting rate sponsors including Johnson & Johnson, sarily thank him for the gift of life without acknowledgement isn't pursued. That's not, and the Friends of USU, it plays like an both legs and one arm. Strikingly, the only alter all, the story Spiro and LX)nahue set out to extended promotional ad for the belea- patient shown uttering such a sentiment is tell. And since their objective is so calculat- guered West Point of eombat medicine. As an Iraqi soldier. Captain Furat: "A soldier's edty to kindle Americans' outrage one appreci- such, it makes an insistent case that we— soldier, a warrior" a medic points out, lest ates why, in strategic terms, they choose to like the physicians and nurses whose work it skeptics question his entitlement to care. "1 focus exclusively on Tomas. Not only is he an documents-—bracket off the politics of the don't iike my life. Please kill me," he begs, engaging spokesman of the antiwar move- war as a needless distraction. On the "life- having just been told that his legs "probably ment but (as Eddie Vedder's lyric implies) saving end of things" one simply gets on won't ever work again." The doctor duly his body itself serves as an unanswerable with tending the wounded. Whether one assures him that many people love him and interrogative: So, the war was worth this? cares for the president or not, there are "they don't care whether you can walk gravely injured men and women to be cared again." But what, if any, comfort he derives Confronted with one young man's pain, for, and that's al! that counts. resilience, and candor—-it really pisses from such assurances we never learn. Cap- tain Furat makes no further appearance in Tomas off that his body's so useless; that "You don't really get a lot of feedback," other people can walk and he can't—it may one doctor notes. "But when you do get Fighting for Life. seem callous to insist that other suffering some, it's almost always an uplifting Loathe to accentuate the negative, demands attention. And yet. To use the story"—which is exactly what this docu- Sanders foregrounds the more inspiring case wounded veteran as Body of War does is also mentary offers. Where both Body of War of Specialist Crystal Davis, a young woman to disarm broader criticism of the war: to and Lioness depict the pursuit of proper from Texas whose right leg has been ampu- attenuate consideration of it as, above all, a medical attention as a war of attrition waged tated below the knee and who simultaneous- body blow to Iraq. Instead, Spiro and Don- by veterans and their families. Fighting for ly faces the potential loss of her left foot. A ahue present us with a purely American Life underscores the dedication, expertise, fighter, she responds to her situation with iragedy, but a tragedy in which they discern and compassion of military physicians, gutsy bravado and a new tattoo of her seeds of patriotic promise below the topsoil showcasing the state-of-the-art technologi- machine-gun-toting hero, Tigger—a life- of perfidy. By valorizing the heroism of the cal wizardry at their disposal. And it is long friend, "because he always bounces Senate's "immortal 23," they gesture indeed remarkable to observe how a plastic right back." As for her injuries, she regards towards national regeneration: a republican cranium can be implanted; a hand painstak- them as "battle wounds" that she intends to faith that America can, and will, be "good ingly refashioned; skin and flesh transposed wear with pride, lust once, "for about five again" just liked it used to be. In this way, from one area to another; how bodies— seconds," did she succumb to "why did this the war is mystified as an abomination that's people—may be reassembled. When the happen to me?" self-pity, her dad avers. To essentially an aberration-—a detour from an camera alights on a sign over the entrance to strains of Springsteen, Sanders's film closes otherwise illustrious national past. Walter Reed Medical Center—"We Provide with father and daughter heading home to

Iraq War veteran has sought Brandon Hughey has refused Kyle Snyder remains AWOL from asylum in Canada in Breaking Ranks. deployment to Iraq in Breaking Ranks. the U.S. Army in Breaking Ranks.

CINEASTE, Winter 2008 29 Crystal Davis, who lost her leg An injured soldier is treated for his wounds in Fighting for Life. below the knee, in Fighting for Life.

Texas, Crystal propelling herself with the aid came back all the stronger for the experi- his refusal to engage the war as noth- of two sticks; dad depositing a now-super- ence." Of course some do "bounce back," as ing but an American story—or fluous wheelchair in the back of his truck. Fighting for Life graphically attests. But oth- T tragedy—has become more pro- Such portraits of courage are undeniably ers don't. And then there are those Other nounced with time as conditions in Iraq powerful stuff. Again, it deteriorated in 2005, then seems unfeeling—if not apparently improved in more brutal—to demur. But "This refusal to engage the war as anything 2008 only to drop precipi- for all its scrupulous avoid- tously from the electoral ance of politics, Fighting for other than an American story—or tragedy- radar. With almost no one Life makes just as calculated has become more pronounced with time as currently caring to mention use of its injured soldiers as the war—the surge's "suc- does Body of War. Here, conditions in Iraq deteriorated in 2005, then cess" now a matter of bipar- however, the objective is to apparently improved in 2008 only to drop tisan consensus—just one resuscitate what John Hus- recent documentary feature, ton termed the "warrior precipitously from the electoral radar." Steve Connors and Molly myth." Decrying the War Bingham's Meeting Resis- Department's suppression of his 1946 docu- others whose pain, losses, and grief have tance, has appeared to supplement earlier mentary about blind veterans. Let There Be proven almost invisible to American docu- films that brought Iraqi lives into focus, Light, he identified this myth as the delusion mentary filmmakers, a handful of notable such as Andrew Berends's The Blood of My "that our American soldiers went to war and exceptions aside. Brother, James Longley's Iraq in Fragments,

A member of the Iraqi insurgency is Graffiti expresses a popular sentiment in Meeting Resistance. interviewed in Meeting Resistance.

30 CINEASTE, Winter 2008 and Laura Poitras's My Country, My Country {all released in 2006). Probing the motivations of Iraqi resistors, Connors and Bingham interview several men and women intent on expelling the occupa- m m tion forces. Their testimony is interspersed with the analysis of a Baghdad political science professor who enunciates what we take to THE SCHOOL OF SOUND be the filmmakers' own conclusions: that violent resistance primari- ly flows from nationalist outrage at Iraq's desecration; that it's inflected by Islam but free from sectarianism; that it attracts foreign 1 ^H fedayeen without being externally directed, and that it is not primar- ily comprised of Ba'athist "dead-enders." Registering these voices, Meeting Resistance gives sympathetic sub- stance to those either altogether absent from fictionalized depictions of the war or fleetingly glimpsed specters—figures in keffiyahs lurking A unique series of masterclasses at the edge of the frame. That this documentary now seems the arti- exploring the art of sounc fact of a time past, too eager to discount the possibility of sectarian strife, IP with the moving image shouldn't negate its value as a countemarradve. Asking documentary film lo plug gaps in day-to-day interpretation left by more immediate forms of journalism is hardly a reasonable demand. And if the Iraq ^ of 2003 that Connors and Bingham conjure is now a foreign country - twice over, they do at least remind us that its inhabitants have a real, palpable existence with a different set of stories to tell and wounds to 1 expose. 1 This should, of course, go without saying—except that so many 1 filmmakers, including those most vociferously opposed to the war, London 15- 18 April 2001 seem determined not to go there. With the veteran as optic, Iraq appears as traumatic flashback: a serrated shard of memory from a www.schoolofsound.co.uk war neither comfortably past nor wholly present. • Join mailing \isK )0)@Khoolofiaund.co.uk This is the third in a series of articles on documentaries on the Iraq War by Susan Carruthers, including "Say Cheese: Operation Iraqi Freedom on Film" (Cinéaste^ Vol. XXXII, No. 1) and "Question Time: The Iraq War Revisited" (Cinéaste, Vol. XXXIl, No. 4). Oipie.*! of these back numbers may be ordered using the order form on page 87 or online at www.cineaste.com.

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