Restrepo

Over the long weekend, I watched a Sundance Festival 2010 Award Winning documentary sponsored by National Geographic Channel. “Restrepo” chronicles the lives of average men deployed for fifteen months into the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan on the border of Pakistan in 2007. Taken from the perspective of two journalists from Vanity Fair who spent the deployment with the troupes, this heroic feat of journalism creates an honest and thorough depiction of the individuals who fight for us overseas. Arming the soldiers with cameras in addition to their guns, this movie gives a sincere and compassionate face to the soldiers and individuals fighting for us but at the same time gives no end in sight to the War on Terror.

The Korengal Valley was considered one of the “most dangerous places on earth” with 75% of the bombs dropped in Afghanistan having been dropped there. The soldiers and journalists found themselves at risk of being attacked at any moment and were fraught with extreme paranoia as they were expected to “take fire every single day” and were only protected by bullet-hole littered bunkers that provided minimal conditions.

The movie takes its namesake from the outpost the platoon built amid the onset of terror of the Taliban threatening them. The outpost, finished two months after his death, was named after platoon medic Juan “Doc” Restrepo. On July 22^nd, barely a month into their deployment, Doc Restrepo was shot and killed by Taliban and made death real for the platoon. His death signified to them and to the viewer that all the people the soldiers knew in Afghanistan were at terrible risk. Restrepo himself is only briefly seen in the movie as he both opens and ends with a shot of him and three of his fellow soldiers on the plane ride to Afghanistan. He is seen as an incredibly charismatic man who excitedly narrates his plane-ride, ambitious to start his time at war.

That is perhaps the greatest accomplishment of the film. The movie is not a Hollywood epic unlike many war movies. Instead it gives a face to the “average-Joes” you meet as they tell stories, show each other pictures from home, and goof around in their spare time. The chronicle is made more real by the moments of sheer boredom in which the soldiers sit around to play instruments, tell jokes, wrestle, play games, dance to music, and even express themselves through art and graffiti. The vast sense of camaraderie among the men in the movie is touching and reaches as climax when the second man killed in the platoon is found dead and one soldier incessantly weeps when he hears the news.

Despite this, there is an incessant feeling of disjunction with the local community as the soldiers do not demonstrate the same respect for the people living there. In their weekly diplomacy with some of the local elders, the soldiers are often deceitful and unrelenting as they force much of the blame on the previous platoon that was stationed there. The elders only even began to talk to the soldiers after the soldiers killed a sacred cow that got caught in an army fence and the elders demanded repayment to no avail. In future meetings, the soldiers ensured the citizens that Americans would bring jobs and security among other benefits but no steps were seen to making that change much to the suspicion of the people. The citizens whose family were insurgents refused to work with the soldiers as the culture is deeply rooted in families and ideologies.

The movie, though it focuses expressly on the people involved and rarely on the politics of the situation, seems to call to address the utter impossible nature of any chance that US involvement in Afghanistan will create positive change. From revenge-driven soldiers who had no idea what they were getting into to local citizens who refuse to comply, the planned strategy begins to deviate as the war takes unsuspecting turns on the battlefield.

The United States withdrew from the Korengal Valley in April of 2010 but the memory of the numerous men who fought and died there lives on.

Watch the trailer after the jump.