REVIEW: Restrepo

Restrepo

Director: Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington

Year: 2010

Plot Summary: Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington's year dug in with the Second Platoon in one of Afghanistan's most strategically crucial valleys reveals extraordinary insight into the surreal combination of back breaking labor, deadly firefights, and camaraderie as the soldiers painfully push back the Taliban.

Winner of this year's documentary award at Sundance and tipped for an Oscar nomination, Restrepo is a documentary that follows a group of soldiers positioned in the most dangerous area of Afghanistan for just over a year.

Like last year's Oscar winner, The Hurt Locker, Restrepo isn't a film about the politics of the war. You won't find any interviews with politicians, generals or diplomats here. Instead, the documentary simply puts you in the shoes of these young men who have to live through the war. In this respect, Restrepo is fantastic. Watching it, you feel like you are living alongside these soldiers, fearing for their safety with every battle and beginning to understand them as if you were there with them.

As a result, you also start to realise how these men at Outpost Restrepo will never be the same when they return to their ordinary lives back home, totally sympathising with the man who speaks about needed four different kinds of sleeping pills to actually rest peacefully and the man who is still haunted with the images of his friend's death.

The raw footage that the film-makers capture through the year at Outpost Restrepo is absolutely fascinating, giving us a first hand insight into what modern warfare is truly like. It not only shows how difficult it is to be a solider in Afghanistan, knowing that every possible target could be a threat and that the enemy could be anywhere, but it also shows the true horror of the job too. While it's a position that many glorify, Restrepo shows that there is a human prince to the bravery and patriotism. A scene, for example, in which one of their colleagues is killed right in front of their eyes is one of the most heartbreaking I've ever seen in documentary cinema. The raw emotions of fear, disillusionment and loss are enough to bring you to tears.

However, the moments of warmth and ordinary life are just as engrossing as it shows war isn't just about the fighting. There are scenes in which the soldiers simply sit around talking, playing guitar, wrestling or making changes to their outpost that truly draw you in to their lifestyle and show us a side to the war that we've never seen before.

A terrific look at what being a solider is really like, Restrepo is a documentary that demands to be seen. Perhaps it never soars in the way it could because it remains entirely in one location and never provides an outside perspective. But this is part of it's wonder and it's nevertheless a spellbinding insight into the war in Afghanistan.

4/5

By Daniel Sarath with 1 comment