G.I. Journos’ Killer War Doc

A lit­tle more than two years ago, film­maker Deborah Scranton got an offer to embed with the New Hampshire National Guard as they headed to Iraq. She turned it down. Instead, Scranton gave cam­eras to ten sol­diers — and let them shoot the movie. The result, The War Tapes, pre­miered this week­end in New York, at the Tribeca Film Festival. It’s not only the best doc­u­men­tary to date about the con­flict in Iraq. But it just might change the face of jour­nal­ism in the process.
Most movies about Iraq, so far, have been pretty thin, with lit­tle insight into the guys fight­ing this war, and min­i­mal com­bat footage. That’s largely because the film­mak­ers didn’t have the acess — or the patience — to get to the war’s meati­est mate­r­ial.
Scranton leapfrogged that prob­lem by let­ting the sol­diers become her cam­era­men. Shooting over a thou­sand hours, in the field and back at home, they took the time to cpa­ture their unit’s unguarded moments, both lit­eral and metaphor­i­cal. The laugh-​​out-​​loud moments come almost as often as the IED attacks: the ode to guard­ing sep­tic trucks; the Tarantino-​​esque debate over whether a sev­ered limb “resem­bles ham­burger, ground up but uncooked.. [or] like a raw pot roast”; the scorpion-​​spider cage match; the verge-​​of-​​breakup moments with girl­friends; the young Iraqi, who stepped into an American con­voy a moment too soon.
The War Tapes ben­e­fits from a strong dose of luck. Scranton could’ve cast a thou­sand GIs, and not got­ten three sol­diers as sharp, as artic­u­late, and as funny as Stephen Pink, Zack Bazzi, and Mike Moriarty, the movie’s main char­ac­ters. And she couldn’t have known how much action these guys would see — Al-​​Anbar province in 2004 saw some of the most fero­cious fight­ing of the coun­terin­sur­gency.
But an even larger help­ing of edi­to­r­ial prowess makes The War Tapes a suc­cess. Condensing a thou­sand hours into two hours is tough. Condensing into two hours with a nar­ra­tive and emo­tional arc this strong is damn-​​near-​​impossible.
In recent years, there’s been a ridicu­lously can­tan­ker­ous debate over the ben­e­fits of pro­fes­sional jour­nal­ists ver­sus citizen-​​reporters. The pros are seen as biased and clue­less; the ama­teurs as, well, ama­teur­ish, with­out the sea­soned eye to pick the truly telling moments from the tor­rent of expe­ri­ence. Take the blogs from front­line troops, for exam­ple. The views are a refresh­ing alter­na­tive to what you read in the main­stream press; their anec­dotes vital. But get­ting to that good stuff, sort­ing out the prover­bial wheat from blo­gos­phere chaff, takes for­ever. Most read­ers, I’ve found, just give up.
Documentaries like The War Tapes — and Grizzly Man, and, to a lesser extent, Capturing the Friedmans — have found the happy medium between the old– and new-​​school approaches to news. The citizen-​​journos col­lect the facts. The pros craft a story from ‘em. The result may not be what the news-​​gathers expected — Zack Bazzi was sur­prised how much of his polit­i­cal views wound up in The War Tapes’ final cut. But, in this case at least, it’s sat­is­fy­ing and truth­ful and raw. And it’s the kind of jour­nal­ism we ought to have. With some luck, it may be the kind we get, mov­ing ahead.

May 1st, 2006 | Roll Your Own, War Update | 318615 Comments »http://defensetech.org/2006/05/01/g-i-journos-killer-war-doc/G.I.+Journos%27+Killer+War+Doc2006-05-01+16%3A50%3A24david_axe You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.