Comments on 'Retrespo'

Fly-on-the-wall documentary, named after one of the medical soldiers who died in the Kornagal Vally in Afghanistan. A piece of continuallity editing shows that how dangerous the war zone really is, when a jeep is blow from the ground, dirt rising, and all sound disappears. The choice to keep filming at this time is extremely brave of the filmmaker and presents us with how far they are willing to go to the present the everyday of soldiers in Afghanistan. They cannot predict the action that will take place in the land, and the decision to keep filming shows that they are aiming to make no cuts of reality. They just want to present the landscape and people as they are. The constant use of continuallity is significant in presenting how the soldiers behave - we really get the sense that reality could never be more real. Besides the small portion at the beginning of the film, no factual information is presented in the film, it is entirely observational of what is taking place. This makes it appear that the filmmakers do not want to include anything in the film that would encourage the viewer to take a pro-democracry or anti-war side of argument. They only want to present what is actually happening, and nothing that would cause an argument to develop.

We hear or see little from the filmmakers themselves, and this enhance the anti-argument nature of the documentary that I have interpreted. Interviews of the soldiers are featured, so elements of the expository are still included, but not prominent. They share their accounts of being in Afghanistan, and I wouldn't be surprised if some viewers thought that the filmmakers have included this to gain our sympathy. Because we are only hearing what they have to say, it can be argued that the film takes a biased stance on their side. However, I think that this is not what the filmmakers are intending to do, and this makes it clear that this is not a film about war, but a film about people involved in war. They draw from their experiences of it and interperate it as they would. The spectator can argue that some of their words may be over-exaggerated, but if they were involved in war and asked to talk about it, I'm sure that another spectator, somewhere, would say the same thing about them and what they have to say.

The film also enables the viewers to understand what the lives of the soldiers are like. I was surprised to discover that the cocky, jokey, foul-mouthed behavior of U.S. soldiers exists in the everyday, and are not over-exaggerations created by the Hollywood industry, but it appears that fictional personalities do exist in the real world. It is the the reality of the soldiers. That is what they are like and how they behave. Compared to war films, however, we are only seeing the perspective of the American soldiers, and not of the Taliban. In war films, such as 'Saving Private Ryan' camera angles are placed so that we see as many different angles and perspectives of a scene as possible. However, here, we are following the Americans. This is what they see, we only have their perspective to see things from and this is key moment of reality as the camera acts as a point-of-view shot. If we were where they were, that would be the only perspective that we see from, our own. We are trusting the camera to visualize for us, and fortunately, it shows us nothing but the now.

I will leave my comments at this point, as I have noticed that throughout this post, I have been repeating myself. Because this is a fly-on-the-wall documentary, which intends to do nothing but present a reality as it is, with no political, cultural or moral twists and turns, there are less resources to form an opinion from. I am, more or less, struggling to form an opinion on the everyday, and can only draw attention to fact that the only aim of 'Retrespo' is show the life of the soldiers exactly as it is.