Country:
USA
Recognizable Faces:
The Battle Company 2nd Of The 503rd Infantry Regiment, 173rd Airborne Brigade
Directed By:
Tim Hetherington
Sebastian Junger
Every single argument I ever had about the war on terror ended up like this - "Who are you to know, Ben? Do you have intel from within the government? If they are over there, I'm sure there is a very good reason". I cannot answer anything to that, because I never went to war, to see for myself. I'm sure I would step on a landmine after three to four minutes anyway. Thanks to the kind and courageous cast of Restrepo and the nutcases at National Geographic, there is now a documentary that presents one of the rawest war experiences. Tim Hetherington and Sebastien Junger follow the terrifying journey of American soldiers in the Kornegal valley, a place identified as the most dangerous deployment in Afghanistan. After viewing Restrepo, I'd say it's only a place where American soldiers are not welcome.
What the movie does best is to show the tremendous gap in between the American plan and the life in Kornegal valley. There are wonderful scenes where Captain Dan Kearney is discussing with the village elders about the plans to construct a road through the valley. He promises economic wealth and a better future, but you can see it doesn't make any sense to them. The people of Kornegal valley live simply and despite having a rough go, they don't know anything else. Imagine a New York executive making his way to the south, telling the fine people of Louisiana they're going to change the way they live for the distant promise of economic wealth. It doesn't make sense. They just live differently. Of course, there's no war going on in Louisiana. But I stand by my example. The U.S Army left the Kornegal valley in April of 2010. It's a good thing, I don't think they could have ever changed it.
Another beautiful scene that exposes the non-sense of war happens when they kick start the Rock Avalanche mission. The goal was to debunk some Taliban out of their hideout, but after a series of air strikes, they realized that they had bombed families. Dan Kearney interrogates this man, who just got his house bombed and his daughters injured. He wants to know about the Taliban positioning. That man didn't speak my language, lived according to traditions that I don't know and looked just alien to me. But the anger on his face was so pure and intense. What he said basically (according to the translator) was: "You bombed my house, you maimed my daughters, why in the blue fuck would I help you". War makes sense from a bird's eye view, but when you zoom in, it's a different story. Restrepo is as close as it gets to the everyday grind of war.
The field footage is often cut with interviews of the surviving soldiers of O.P Restrepo (a camp named after a the charismatic soldier Juan Restrepo, who got killed in combat). None of them is happy and none of them, except maybe for Dan Kearney are convinced they did something right. And even then, you often see doubt in the Captain's eyes. Private Miguel Cortez is the only one smiling through the interview process, but his smile is one of the saddest things I've ever seen. It's like a twitch, a memento from a better time than now. There is no real climax to Restrepo, no real over-the-top emotional moments, but this actually works FOR the movie. It displays war as something violent and chaotic, but it doesn't dramatize it in any way. That's a ballsy move from the filmmakers because it requires the viewer a lot of focus if there's no straight narrative to follow. But it works out because Restrepo sheds some light on a reality that was never presented like this. War at its purest, most ruthless form. Hats off National Geographic, this is a grinding experience.