Restrepo (Hetherington, Junger, 2010): USA

Review by William Barton. Viewed at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival 2011.

Writer and war journalist Sebastian Junger has teamed up with documentarian and war journalist Tim Hetherington to create Restrepo; a compelling and revealing story of a platoon’s deployment in one of the most dangerous places in Afghanistan.

Restrepo is up for an Oscar for “Best Documentary: Feature,” and deservedly so. Hetherington and Junger both put their lives on the line for months at a time to complete this documentary. Restrepo played at the metro theater during the 26th annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival and both Hetherington and Junger were kind enough to attend and do a Q&A session after the film showed. One filmmaker would be embedded with the platoon and they claim that it was done this way because the threat of injury and death was so great in the Korengal valley that in order to insure that the film would continue to get made, they couldn’t both be with the platoon at the same time.

The danger that the filmmakers were constantly surrounded by in following the soldiers is immediately evident in the first scene of the film where a convoy is going down a road. A roadside bomb goes off under the engine block of the Humvee that Junger is in. Everyone rushes from the Humvee and a firefight ensues. The danger didn’t stop there; throughout the film, the platoon, along with the filmmakers, are involved in 5 to 6 firefights a day. The platoon spent one year under this constant stress and in order to show the psychological effect and to show the events as they happened, the filmmakers were right in the thick of it the entire time.

The premise of Restrepo is simple. One platoon, one valley, one year. The film starts with the deployment of the platoon, then goes to the year of fighting, then ends with the extraction of the platoon. The beauty of this film is not in it’s structure. The audience is given such a window into the lives of the soldiers and for the first time, we are able to see all the aspects of a soldiers life: not just the fighting. We see what they do with their downtime, how they react to a fellow soldiers death, what they talk like, what they’re interested in, their senses of humor, and what brought them to where they are now. During the Q&A session, the filmmakers claimed that the girlfriends and wives of the soldiers thanked the filmmakers after screening the film because even after talking to their significant others, they couldn’t grasp the reality of the situation until Restrepo was screened.

Hetherington and Junger both strayed away from the political aspect of the war and strictly focused on the soldiers that were fighting the war. This made for a refreshing and great film because it never preached the goods and evils of war, it never glorified war at all; it simply gave us a glimpse into the lives of the men who fight for our country. This film not only served as a documentary, but it could also double as a sociological study on soldiers post-war. It was said that the type and the amount of fighting in the Korengal valley hadn’t been seen since World War II. The soldiers come back with intense P.T.S.D and this film really does show how and why war can have a devastating effect on the human psyche.

Restrepo told a true tale of the American soldiers who, despite not always knowing why, continue to follow the orders that are given to them and do so with the utmost valor. Whether war is good or bad is not the issue in Restrepo, but showing the soldier’s struggles to America. Restrepo is a worthwhile film that captures war with no biases or political agendas attached.