Dir. Danfung Dennis, USA/UK/Afghanistan, 2011, 88 mins
Review by Philippa Bradnock
As we get to the tenth anniversary of the allied invasion of Afghanistan documentaries abound about this controversial war. Director Danfung Dennis’ take on the conflict is a personal story which follows one US marine grunt, Sgt Nathan Harris of Echo Company 2 nd Platoon, as his team attempts to battle the Taliban in a rural area in summer 2009. He is badly wounded, and transported back to North Carolina to recuperate, and the film intercuts footage of his tour of duty with his home life back in the US.
Dennis obtained access to follow the platoon and shot his film with no script, plan or funding, a risky strategy and one which doesn’t entirely pay off. Dennis is a photojournalist, and the most striking aspect of Hell and Back Again is the way it looks. Soldiers are silhouetted against dusky skies, reflected in still pools. They move forward into purpling evening light, or sit hunched as the wind rustles the grasses around them, creating a grim vision of intrusion into these bucolic landscapes.
The film is also beautifully edited. One wonderful sequence starts with Harris studying the new ‘Call of Duty’ video game in a mall, the colour drains and lit TV screens darken behind him as we are drawn into a flashback to Afghanistan. This ends with his moving through a door into a village compound, which becomes a door in ‘Call of Duty’ as Harris plays. In the next cut, the dashboard of the game’s screen matches the dashboard of the car in which Harris’ wife, Ashley, transports him to and from medical appointments. It is fascinating to watch a documentary as concerned with style as with content, created by someone who evidently believes that gritty realism doesn’t require rough construction.
Hell and Back Again is careful to avoid moral or political judgements, and Harris remains on message in the brief periods of introspection we see, emphasising the importance of helping the Afghan people out of poverty. But he is an unsettling subject, particularly for a left wing viewer, as he speaks of his motives for joining up, ‘I wanted to kill people,’ and plays and poses at home with his handguns in front of his impassive wife. It is an uncomfortable confrontation with the reality of how soldiers have to be to do their jobs. The irony is that this self professed macho killer is never shown actually fighting (in fact the enemy is invisible, firing and disappearing frustratingly into the fields), but he does show a great skill for diplomacy with villagers, apologising, ensuring soldiers act respectfully, and offering explanations and compensation for damage to property.
The film has no face to face interviews, and we are left to piece together the subjects’ motivations from chance comments. In one scene, Ashley tells a pharmacist, apparently a stranger, that she feels she no longer recognises her husband because of his rage. It is a sad moment, all the more so for the fact that there has been no other sign of her strain. Dennis chooses to imply internal suffering by overlaying scenes of Harris rubbing his temples or holding his head with the soundtrack from footage in Afghanistan. He also distorts the sound when Harris’ doctor is speaking, as if Harris is so distressed that he cannot take in his comments. We cannot know if Harris confirmed these experiences, so the device is at best manipulative and at worst immoral.
The film also suffers from a lack of clear structure. At times the viewer cannot tell if they are following the same platoon, or whether time has skipped forward or back in either location. The couple visit a house to rent, but we don’t know why. Harris seems to become paranoid but it’s not clear whether his mistrust in Ashley is founded or not. With no explicit structure or narration, and no interviews, Hell and Back Again satisfies at the level of aesthetics and blind empathy, but offers little insight into either the conflict or the difficulties experienced by those returning home from it.
