From A Hole In The Ground
Yesterday’s Restrepo-meets-Rachel Maddow post got two whole responses…yes! Moviebob noted that Big Hollywood people “are pissing and moaning about this one for the same yet totally opposite reason — they’re mad that it’s just-the-facts approach is ‘hiding the truth about the war being just,’ and here on HE I’m reading that it’s ‘hiding the truth about the war being a lost cause.’ And then AH wrote that Restrepo “shows that to the soldiers on the ground, reasons don’t matter.”
Yeah, sure — reason and context don’t matter. Just do the job, get your three squares and sleep in a warm cot. The American mantra at home and abroad!
Restrepo‘s Afghanistan grunts don’t seem to know or care if U.S. forces are winning, losing or in a stalemate. No thoughts whatsoever about the world beyond their perimeter. And so in the spirit of honest on-the-ground reporting Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington did more than submit to this mindset during filming. They also edited Restrepo in such a way as to persuade audiences to embrace this no-bigger-picture, keep-your-head-down attitude while watching.
To some Restrepo is the summit of straight-dope, you-are-there, no-agendas-or-interpretation documentary filmmaking. To guys like me it’s about the avoidance syndrome that filmmakers have learned is the only way to go if you’re dealing with the Middle East conflict — don’t contextualize or interpret or ask “what does it all mean or amount to?” because average Americans will ignore you if you do.
The lesson is simple: Just keep your Middle East war doc plain and non-judgmental and Hurt Locker-ish and you’ll get a lot of critics on your side, and some people might actually watch your film when it plays on HBO or PBS or wherever. But go the Michael Moore-Oliver Stone route and you’re severely limiting your audience.
What’s so bad about just telling it like it is, right? The Afghan grunts are just into taking the fight one day at a time, cleaning their weapons, making nice with the locals as best they can, watching each other’s backs in firefights, wailing with grief when one of their own gets killed, talking about girlfriends back home…eating chow, catching zees, smoking cigarettes and watching Captain Kangaroo “so don’t tell me I’ve nothin’ to do.”
War is so much more digestible or at least tolerable if you keep your head down and avoid dealing with unnecessary complications and save your brain for the immediate stuff in front of you that you have to deal with.
Which, come to think of it, is the way a lot of regular Middle Americans handle life in the U.S. of A….no? Keep it simple and local, dumb it down, don’t read or inquire too much and get yourself in a tizzy, watch Fox News, stick to the basics, wash the dishes, pick up a bucket of KFC for dinner, change the oil, take the kids to school, walk the dog, feed the cats, join a health club, pay the bills, mow the lawn and go to the pet store and buy a couple of white rats to feed to your pet python.
People who live and think this way domestically are the salt of the earth — the folks who live their lives and pay their taxes and attend concerts in the park and go to ice-skating rinks and have pool parties in the backyard. If you want to sound like a misanthrope you could also call them the American walking dead — the go-along shopping mall zombies who make the American heartland such a wonderfully boring and submissive place to live in. (This is the central observational backdrop of Green Day’s American Idiot, of course.) But let’s not go there.
So its a mirror-image thing. Restrepo is essentially about an Afghanistan War/U.S. troops version of the basic American head-down, know-nothing attitude, and vice versa. Surviving, getting along, tending to the basics and so on is the way most people deal with life — I get that — but there’s no way this go-along attitude, either on domestic or foreign soil, is what anyone might call “interesting.” And capturing it is not my idea of stirring filmmaking. It’s more like an exercise in submission or sedation, even.
“People who live and think this way domestically are the salt of the earth.” Check. “The folks who live their lives and pay their taxes and attend concerts in the park and go to ice-skating rinks and have pool parties in the backyard.” Right. As opposed to people who are REALLY living life, getting on line at ungodly hours to buy i-Phones and nursing rage hard-ons at unruly Latinos. I mean, really, man, aside from being proprietors of online sites that allow us the luxury of bitching about shit, how do you and I get off on giving the moral high-hand to such people? All due respect, Jeff, but last time I looked you weren’t Rory Stewart.
“People who live and think this way domestically are the salt of the earth.” Check. “The folks who live their lives and pay their taxes and attend concerts in the park and go to ice-skating rinks and have pool parties in the backyard.” Right. As opposed to people who are REALLY living life, getting on line at ungodly hours to buy i-Phones and nursing rage hard-ons at unruly Latinos. I mean, really, man, aside from being proprietors of online sites that allow us the luxury of bitching about shit, how do you and I get off on giving the moral high-hand to such people? All due respect, Jeff, but last time I looked you weren’t Rory Stewart.
You’d think the closet cases at Big Hollywood would be happy just watching some muscular guys in uniform with multiple tats tearing it up in that desert heat. Kind of like LexG watching KStew and Jessica Alba “acting” in a Viv Thomas movie.
You’d think the closet cases at Big Hollywood would be happy just watching some muscular guys in uniform with multiple tats tearing it up in that desert heat. Kind of like LexG watching KStew and Jessica Alba “acting” in a Viv Thomas movie.
It’s hard to know what to do about this, JW. On the one hand, a person could be outraged all the time about what goes on, but that isn’t healthy and doesn’t seem to accomplish anything. What do you recommend, practically speaking, that actually accomplishes something?
Non-participation in the insanity is a practice of something at least, the practice of restraint. It’s the outraged people who are causing all the trouble, isn’t it? (Not to mention the cynics–politicians and the like–who merely feign it in the cause of propaganda.) And everybody’s outrage is focused in differently. But it seems to me we have to restrain outrage or otherwise, in fact, we are the manipulated herd of sheep.
Therefore, not everyone who appears only to be “tending to the basics” is a silent supporter and enabler of the vile stupidities. Some are practicing the discipline that will be necessary to live after the outraged kill each other off.
It’s hard to know what to do about this, JW. On the one hand, a person could be outraged all the time about what goes on, but that isn’t healthy and doesn’t seem to accomplish anything. What do you recommend, practically speaking, that actually accomplishes something?
Non-participation in the insanity is a practice of something at least, the practice of restraint. It’s the outraged people who are causing all the trouble, isn’t it? (Not to mention the cynics–politicians and the like–who merely feign it in the cause of propaganda.) And everybody’s outrage is focused in differently. But it seems to me we have to restrain outrage or otherwise, in fact, we are the manipulated herd of sheep.
Therefore, not everyone who appears only to be “tending to the basics” is a silent supporter and enabler of the vile stupidities. Some are practicing the discipline that will be necessary to live after the outraged kill each other off.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omelas
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omelas
And also, what Glenn said.
And also, what Glenn said.
Wells, your starry-eyed consumerism, as evidenced by recent posts covering your standing in line to purchase an iPhone 4, and fawning over Blu-Ray releases is no better than the “walking dead” you describe. What do you do that is so enlightened? Reading a Warren Beatty biography doesn’t elevate you either.
Wells, your starry-eyed consumerism, as evidenced by recent posts covering your standing in line to purchase an iPhone 4, and fawning over Blu-Ray releases is no better than the “walking dead” you describe. What do you do that is so enlightened? Reading a Warren Beatty biography doesn’t elevate you either.
It’s simple. What must be done by the individual is that which, if done by every individual, would result in peace, prosperity, and happiness. Therefore, “tending to the basics” is it, exactly. No one can do more than that and outrage — expressed, enacted, and fomented in its numerous variations — is not somehow more than that. It’s perverse, ignorant, hypocritical, and self-deceived to suggest that it is.
It’s simple. What must be done by the individual is that which, if done by every individual, would result in peace, prosperity, and happiness. Therefore, “tending to the basics” is it, exactly. No one can do more than that and outrage — expressed, enacted, and fomented in its numerous variations — is not somehow more than that. It’s perverse, ignorant, hypocritical, and self-deceived to suggest that it is.
>Yeah, sure — reason and context don’t matter. At least as far as most American troops are concerned, according to the film.
Evidently Tennyson thought so too…
>Yeah, sure — reason and context don’t matter. At least as far as most American troops are concerned, according to the film.
Evidently Tennyson thought so too…
Holy Spokes: “Reading a Warren Beatty biography doesn’t elevate you either.”
This comment reminds me of a post of a about year ago (perhaps involving The Hurt Locker?) in which Jeff complained about … something … maybe about reduced screening times on holidays/during the snow. Anyway, it turned into one of those tomes about how he loves movies and wants to die at his computer screen or somesuch. Someone suggested he chilled and read a great novel instead of going to the movies just this once, and Jeff’s reply was along the lines of that the “go and read a book” mentality is an indication of a loser who doesn’t engage with life to the fullest.
Man, I wish I could find that post.
Holy Spokes: “Reading a Warren Beatty biography doesn’t elevate you either.”
This comment reminds me of a post of a about year ago (perhaps involving The Hurt Locker?) in which Jeff complained about … something … maybe about reduced screening times on holidays/during the snow. Anyway, it turned into one of those tomes about how he loves movies and wants to die at his computer screen or somesuch. Someone suggested he chilled and read a great novel instead of going to the movies just this once, and Jeff’s reply was along the lines of that the “go and read a book” mentality is an indication of a loser who doesn’t engage with life to the fullest.
Man, I wish I could find that post.
The definition of any successful movie, to me anyway, is whether it achieves what it set out to achieve. In those terms, Restrepo is a success.
Now, you may want it to be more but that’s not what the filmmakers wanted. Obviously, that does not mean that your concerns aren’t legitimate but it also does not mean that the project isn’t a success.
The definition of any successful movie, to me anyway, is whether it achieves what it set out to achieve. In those terms, Restrepo is a success.
Now, you may want it to be more but that’s not what the filmmakers wanted. Obviously, that does not mean that your concerns aren’t legitimate but it also does not mean that the project isn’t a success.
Jeff,
With respect, I think it’s worth considering that you’re falling into the “reviewing the movie you want instead of the movie that is” trap on this. Or, if nothing else, you’re making what I’d call a narrow assumption that a movie/doc about a war MUST have a broader agenda one way or the other.
If these filmmakers set out to tell ONLY the soldiers-eye-view story, and they succeeded, why hold them in any sort of contempt for not telling a story they NEVER set out to tell?
Jeff,
With respect, I think it’s worth considering that you’re falling into the “reviewing the movie you want instead of the movie that is” trap on this. Or, if nothing else, you’re making what I’d call a narrow assumption that a movie/doc about a war MUST have a broader agenda one way or the other.
If these filmmakers set out to tell ONLY the soldiers-eye-view story, and they succeeded, why hold them in any sort of contempt for not telling a story they NEVER set out to tell?
I mean, I KNOW you’re a lefty, Wells, but sheeeze. You didn’t like this film for all of the things it wasn’t, yet you thought Stone’s college town coffee shop commercial for Latin American dictatorships was aces?
So, to recap, didn’t like “Restrepo” but did like “South of the Border”.
Show of hands?
That would be Wells, DeeZee and the annoying chick that works at Blicks and smells like cloves and piercing-gone-wrong antibiotic cream.
I mean, I KNOW you’re a lefty, Wells, but sheeeze. You didn’t like this film for all of the things it wasn’t, yet you thought Stone’s college town coffee shop commercial for Latin American dictatorships was aces?
So, to recap, didn’t like “Restrepo” but did like “South of the Border”.
Show of hands?
That would be Wells, DeeZee and the annoying chick that works at Blicks and smells like cloves and piercing-gone-wrong antibiotic cream.
What the MovieBob said…. (ditto)
What the MovieBob said…. (ditto)
Yeah, but more importantly, are The Statler Brothers still “countin’ flowers on the wall” or have they retired/passed away?
Yeah, but more importantly, are The Statler Brothers still “countin’ flowers on the wall” or have they retired/passed away?
You should go even further. Every movie needs an overt liberal treatise. Toy Story 3 was OK, but imagine how more impact it would have if Buzz had a few monologues about taxing soft drinks to help subsidize health care reform.
These guys clearly wanted to make an observational documentary about modern soldiers at war, and they literally risked their lives to do it. You complain about waiting in line for an iPhone on the internet.
You should go even further. Every movie needs an overt liberal treatise. Toy Story 3 was OK, but imagine how more impact it would have if Buzz had a few monologues about taxing soft drinks to help subsidize health care reform.
These guys clearly wanted to make an observational documentary about modern soldiers at war, and they literally risked their lives to do it. You complain about waiting in line for an iPhone on the internet.
so, the guys in the movie are doing exactly what so many of us were pissed at McChrystal for not doing?
Doing the job that’s in front of them, and focusing on survival is pretty much the description of an ideal soldier in the field.
And I’m a pretty hard-core lefty, but have no doubt that I can spend my days worrying about all kinds of extraneous bullshit because there are guys that want to do that job, and I’m grateful as hell for them.
People are going to supply their own context for this film from whatever side of the fence they’re on. Showing what everyday life is like for the troops could hopefully add some perspective to either view.
so, the guys in the movie are doing exactly what so many of us were pissed at McChrystal for not doing?
Doing the job that’s in front of them, and focusing on survival is pretty much the description of an ideal soldier in the field.
And I’m a pretty hard-core lefty, but have no doubt that I can spend my days worrying about all kinds of extraneous bullshit because there are guys that want to do that job, and I’m grateful as hell for them.
People are going to supply their own context for this film from whatever side of the fence they’re on. Showing what everyday life is like for the troops could hopefully add some perspective to either view.
Yesterday’s Restrepo-meets-Rachel Maddow post got two whole responses…yes!
I wonder if Rachel Maddow’s innate unwatchability might’ve been a factor there
Yesterday’s Restrepo-meets-Rachel Maddow post got two whole responses…yes!
I wonder if Rachel Maddow’s innate unwatchability might’ve been a factor there
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