The Reality of the Unreal: Restrepo

An unbreakable bond forged under the harshest of circumstances, a brotherhood that could only exist in a place as desolate and deadly as Outpost Restrepo, in the Korengal Valley, Afghanistan.
While the preceding line may sound like an overly-dramatic voiceover narration for a film trailer, you can rest assured it’s not.

The daily reality of a small squad of 12 American soldiers assigned to the 2nd Platoon of the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team as they serve a 15-month deployment defending a small outpost is the subject of a new documentary Restrepo by Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger.

Over the course of 10 months, these two documentarians spent every waking moment recording not only the daily lives of these men, but the emotional, psychological, and physical changes that they underwent, as well. The changes are quite surprising and the lasting effect on these men’s psyches is something that can only be witnessed by actually viewing the film.

And while the average person may be no stranger to witnessing the horrors of war on the big screen, what helps to set this film apart from all others is the incredibly uncensored access into these soldier’s lives that the audience is given within the film.

As a viewer you are sent on a traumatic and extremely eye-opening “90-minute deployment” with this small band of soldiers as they fight tooth and nail to defend a small rocky outcropping in the middle of nowhere.

The film covers the gamete, containing everything from adrenaline-inducing firefights between American and Taliban forces to highly emotional, and quite frankly tragic, outbursts from soldiers as they witness firsthand the true cost of war as their best friends die a slow and painful death in front of their eyes. No film, in all my experience, gives such an intimate yet broad picture of war from such a uniquely “human perspective.”

The directors go to incredible lengths, risking life and limb many times in the process, to show the audience that what they are witnessing is real and that this is the harsh reality for thousands of young Americans serving overseas every day. Tim comments at one point that “we’re fighting a guerrilla war to keep reality on the agenda,” and his film more than accomplishes this point.

Rather than focusing on the causes and reasons behind the war, Restrepo simply sets out to show the evolution and effects of gruesome and repeated violence during war on the minds of the soldiers fighting in it. The changes in the mental makeup of these men are marked to say the least, and, in many cases, quite shocking and disturbing as well.

To watch a young man no older than age 18 or 19 transform over a period of 10 months from a semi-peace-loving hippie, whose parents wouldn’t even allow him to own a squirt gun, to a man that will kill an enemy without a moment’s hesitation is quite honestly tragic, but important to bear witness to nonetheless.

The film primarily focuses on this specific group of soldiers, but it also does a more than adequate job of showing the civilian cost of the conflict as well. The viewer of Restrepo is exposed to the other side of the conflict, with multiple civilian casualties shown during the film.
At one point, during a mission designed to run the Taliban out of a small area of in a remote valley, someone accidentally orders a bombing run launched on what turns out to be a home of innocent Afghans. Innocent adults and children are caught in the fray and end up being killed in the process. The film, however, steers away from showing any extremely graphic depictions of death, maintaining a distinct sense of tact and sensitivity, while managing to effectively convey its point.

The cinematography in the film is just as harshly beautiful as the subject matter itself. The first-person feel of many of the shots is extremely personal and allows the viewer to connect very easily with the soldier onscreen, and in doing so, makes the audience feel as if it, too, has been sent on a 15-month deployment to this desolate place in mountains of Afghanistan.
A final, but rather important point that I’d like to address about the film is the distinct sense of neutrality that Restrepo assumes. Junger and Hetherington set out to show the war for what it was for this single group of men, without inflicting the film with their own personal agendas or views. In other words, Restrepo can best be described as war without the politics, commentary, or drama.

Restrepo encapsulates the most basic of human instincts and leaves it to the various onlookers to come to their own conclusions.

Rating: 9/10. See it for yourself.

Norton and Nelson combine to create "Grass"

“What the heck do the actors Edward Norton and Tim Blake Nelson have to do with marijuana?” is the question you’re almost certainly wondering at this very moment, and in the case of the film Leaves of Grass, the answer is everything.

If the name Leaves of Grass sounds familiar to you, it’s because it should, Leaves of Grass also happens to be the name of Walt Whitman’s famous poetic chronicle of American culture. Although this coincidence is certainly intentional on the part of writer, director, and actor, Tim Blake Nelson, the film can only be described as a very loose allegory of Whitman’s original work. The film’s plot and the book’s poetry do have some fleeting similarities, but they end there.

Instead, Nelson chooses to shift the focus of the film to one of the many unanswerable questions exploring the nature of human existence: what does it truly mean to be happy? Famed actor Edward Norton is left to ponder this question, in not one, but two lead roles. In the case of Leaves of Grass, these two lead characters happen to be identical twin brothers, one an esteemed philosophy professor at prestigious Brown University, the other a modest marijuana grower from rural Oklahoma.

The film starts out by opening on a rather intriguing lecture given by the professor, Bill Kincaid, on Sophocles, which, oddly enough, more than does its job in the setting the reflective literary tone of the entire film. Shortly after having given this lecture, Bill receives a phone call out of the blue from his brother’s friend, simply named Bolger (Tim Blake Nelson), explaining the tragic news that his brother, Brady Kincaid, has suddenly died in a fatal “crossbow accident.” Forced to go back to his small hometown in Oklahoma for his brother’s supposed funeral, Bill quickly finds out that what he’s originally came home for is really a complete myth, orchestrated by his brother to force him home to help out with a rather insane plot involving his brother and a crime kingpin whom he owes money to.

Without giving too much more away, what follows is a wild and oddly emotional ride that involves everything from a homicidal orthodontist to hundreds of pounds of the finest hydroponically grown pot Oklahoma has ever known. The film quotes numerous literary works, including the novel it’s named after, and uses them quite effectively to convey its constantly shifting theme of the never-ending search for true happiness.

The only reason that these deep moments of reflection in the film manage to stand out is due in large part to the rural setting of the film and the great acting delivered by Edward Norton. Even in the most unexpected people, a marijuana grower, and under the most unusual of circumstances, Norton and many of his supporting actors (including the likes Susan Sarandon, Richard Dreyfuss, and Keri Russell) help to deliver great performances that help the viewer contemplate these larger questions of life in a much different light.

While most may not consider fishing for catfish in a mosquito infested swamp an adequate location to discuss the deeper meaning of life and Walt Whitman’s classic works, or the front seat of a beat-up El Camino an appropriate place to ponder the existence of god, the performances given in the film are so good all around that these settings easily end up seeming a natural place for such deep topics.

The stark contrasts in the film, namely the obvious differences between both brothers, also help the theme of the work to take on a multi-dimensional look by analyzing situations from a myriad of angles. Because of this, and largely due to the great acting of Norton, the transitions between these different characters, and thusly different points of view, are easily smoothed-out and overlooked by the viewer.

Despite the great performances delivered throughout the film, the uneven pacing and the slightly confusing tonal shifts in the film’s plot cause it to be less than perfect. In one scene two characters, a mother and son for example, might be having a deeply emotional conversation, and less than a moment later a redneck and a drug dealer are duking it out in a bloody shootout. If the film were more consistent in its tone, and maintained it throughout, the film could have ultimately been much better.

These jerky transitions cause it to become not only confusing in parts, but also take away from the deeper meaning in the film. The addition of many unneeded action sequences doesn’t help either. Rather than being a slow-moving, perceptive film, the film is peppered in random places with unnecessary bits of vulgarity, if you will.

Thankfully, the film’s redeeming qualities due in large part to Norton’s and the rest of the cast’s amazing acting help to outshine the film’s inconsistencies.

7/10 - Worth a Rent

Dogtooth: Gnawing Into Your Brain

Independent films are often characterized by their uncanny ability to incorporate weird, wonderful, and often controversial themes that most mainstream fair would avoid entirely. And more often than not, this aspect of indie films is what makes them not only compelling, but gripping as well.
The Greek film Dogtooth (aka Kynodontas), directed by filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos, retains many of these qualities common to indie films, and while it certainly incorporates them well, it’s the extent and overkill to which the director goes to convey his intended themes that makes this film a giant thumbs-down for me.
Is it weird? Yes. Is it controversial? Without a doubt. But just because it contains some of these elements doesn’t necessarily make it worth watching.
Dogtooth sets out to explore a single question: what happens to the human condition when one is cut-off completely from the outside world, along with all of its influences? In the case of Dogtooth, the disturbing interactions of three siblings, two sisters and one brother, are explored as they are forced to live out a truly bizarre existence at the country estate where they were born and have never left.
The parents of the three children offer little to no explanation as to why they have chosen to go to such lengths to not only shield but to also imprison their children. Other than a bizarre desire to completely control the mental and social development of their offspring, one can only guess at the sinister motives that are at play within this family.
In their never-ending quest for domination over their children, the parents even go to such extremes as to teach their children the wrong meaning for any word that comes from outside their home. For example, they are taught that the word “telephone” means “salt shaker”, and that a zombie is a small yellow flower. The children are also, rather unsurprisingly, told that the outside world is a place of death and despair, and that they may only leave the confines of their estate when they have lost their “dogtooth.”
It doesn’t take a lot of effort for one to identify the strange effects that this ironfisted isolation has on these three children in the film. The three kids seem to constantly be on the verge of either murder or incest with one another. And, eventually, this isolation does manifest itself in the form of extreme acts of violence among these next of kin, and even in sexual relations between brother and sister, and sister and sister.
It’s this extreme violence that finally pushed me to the point of pure disgust with this film. The basic subject matter is not what causes its downfall in my mind; it’s the utter excess to which the film goes to display its intended themes that makes me dislike it so much. Rather than subtly implying any of the disturbing themes of this film, Lanthimos instead decides upon showing the viewer various scenarios so unnerving and so graphically real that one can’t help but be disturbed.
While some may view this as an artistic choice on the part of the of the director, I don’t see the point in adding things like extremely graphic scenes of sexuality if they don’t in some way add to the plot, theme, or meaning of the film. Thus, when this film is closely examined, a cinephile would be hard-pressed to find any real purpose behind these specific plot elements. They may help deepen one’s understanding of the emotional state of the characters, but this could have easily been accomplished far better by other, less lurid means.
To the credit of Lanthimos, the cinematography in the film is simple yet oddly beautiful, the in-depth study of the human psyche is undoubtedly fascinating, and the themes it explores are also intriguing. But despite these positive points, the negative aspects of the film caused by the sheer gratuity with which it is told make it something I wouldn’t touch with a twenty foot pole. In the end, what this film amounts to is nothing more than an exercise in the depraved and perverted.
Not For Most
Rating: 4.7 out of 10