Untangling the meaning of "Restrepo"

It's tough to do justice to the documentary I saw at SIFF last night - "Restrepo".  Not because it was great or awful - it was neither of those things.  In fact, my rating is a somewhat uneasy B.  Coupled with a strong recommendation that you see it when it comes out in an art-house sized release this July.  I'm more flummoxed by what this documentary could have been.  And maybe should have been.  As it is, I think this movie will appeal to two margins - the strongly anti-war and the proudly pro-soldier.  Some people surely can belong to both margins.  My point is that a vast middle won't find what they're looking for in this documentary.

For the nugget of backgound, Sebastian Junger (who also wrote the book "War" based on this experience) and Tim Hetherington spent big chunks of time embedded with the US Army in the Korengal Valley, Afghanistan.  This movie is a straight up cinema verite` experience - digital video shot while in combat and just plain dickin' around with the soldiers in their precarious base of operations there.  With some post-action interviews shot on the American base in Italy weaved in to provide the narrative skeleton.  In the action footage, you see all the junk included - dirty camera lenses, manic shooting while running around looking for safety amidst the din of activity, lots of far-from-eloquent profanity splattering off the walls in the heat of action or the cold boredom of inaction.  You see some poignancy in the reactions to lives lost (this was the deadliest area in all of Afghanistan for American forces).  But I found myself teetering on the edge of my seat waiting for...something else.  Something like a moral.  Maybe the point is that one wouldn't be, shouldn't be delivered by these men.  They're meant to out there, doing the job and not asking the larger questions.  But isn't that why we have combat journalists?  If they don't ask those questions or disseminate at least the framework for judgment given the context, isn't it all just a bunch of tough guy posturing?  There is no answer to that.  And maybe I'm a cliche` - someone looking for a kernel of answer to a question that no one can pose.  But I think that question is out there.  War?  What is it good for.

"Restrepo" (named for one of the Privates killed in action and the subsequent name of the forward base of operations in "The Kop") is important.  I'm just not yet sure why.  Maybe it's a karmic pairing in my mind with Memorial Day weekend.  And the concern that a vast middle of the American population doesn't even know why they've got Monday off.  If you're in Seattle, there's another showing today (3:45 @ Harvard Exit).  Definitely worth a viewing and the conversation that will result afterward.