The award-winning documentary Restrepois a brutally frank distillation of front-line combat in Afghanistan that presents the war by focusing on a platoon of ordinary US soldiers. It has riled a lot of people, director Tim Hetherington tells TARA BRADY
'HERE'S ONE from the New York Timesblog," says Tim Hetherington: "Hetherington's work seems little more than a mindless, locker-room portrait of some very dangerous boys playing lethal games. Their glorification serves no purpose journalistically or otherwise."
For a man reading a scathing remark about his latest work, Tim Hetherington seems awfully calm. We’re not surprised he’s unflappable: he is, after all, the award- winning photojournalist who remained behind enemy lines during the Liberian civil war – this was after president Charles Taylor had issued an order for his execution.
The British-born 38-year-old, has become accustomed to getting caught in political crossfire. Restrepo,Hetherington's acclaimed documentary account of a nerve-racking 15 months spent with US troops on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, has earned raves from east-coast liberals and (unusually for a documentary) played in red state multiplexes to rapt audiences.
The film, which was co-directed by Hetherington and author Sebastian Junger (The Perfect Storm), has, conversely, as Hetherington notes, "riled a lot of people up".
“Sometimes you just can’t win,” he says. “The hard right don’t want any questions about the basis of the war. The hard left can’t understand anything that isn’t a complete condemnation of everything connected with the war. They don’t want to think about soldiers as people. The film has become a Rorschach test: some people take the film as evidence that the war in Afghanistan was completely out of control, others say it shows the soldiers are noble and brave. Very often the various critiques of the film have said more about the critic and not the film itself.”
The documentarian insists, however, that neither he nor his directing partner had any political axe to grind. Restrepo is, rather, a genuine attempt to grapple with the humanity behind the war machine.
“What we’re saying is that if you’re interested in conflict in Afghanistan, or if you’re interested in containing the war, then understanding what motivates soldiers and understanding how they are likely to react in any given situation is the right ammunition to inform your strategy,” says Hetherington. “I’m a taxpayer in the States. I was a taxpayer in the UK for many years. Right now there’s a discussion in the UK about three nuclear subs. This will have huge implications for defence and for the taxpayer. Even on that basis, I’d rather know what’s going on.”
Edited down from 150 hours of front-line footage and another 200 hours of post- conflict interviews, Restrepo presents the war through ordinary soldiers and character- driven story arcs.
“Because we knew we wanted to make something that was very visceral, and immediately that narrowed our focus considerably. We knew we weren’t going to interview politicians. We knew we weren’t going to give you a big map of Afghanistan and explain the history or what was going on around the country. We didn’t want anything to break the illusion that you’re actually in the valley with these soldiers.”
In an era of carefully orchestrated media visits and embedded tourist-reportage, Restrepo's brutally frank distillation of frontline combat is startling. Shot between May 2007 and July 2008 in the Korengal Valley, and trained precisely on members of Battle Company, Hetherington and Junger record fatalities, locker-room camaraderie, and more waiting around than you'll find in all of Beckett.
The directors, like their subjects, are left completely exposed by the outpost of the title. The resident captain, Capt Dan Kearney, views Restrepo –named for the fallen medic we meet at the beginning of the documentary – as "a middle finger sticking up at the Taliban". Others note that it leaves them looking like "fish in a barrel".
During the production, Hetherington broke a leg and Junger survived an improvised explosive device hit on the Humvee he was travelling in. I wonder how they ever managed to persuade the US military to sign off on such potentially damaging vérité?
“It almost wasn’t planned well enough for us to have negotiated with the military,” says Hetherington. “We had met the soldiers back in 2005, and had this idea of following them out. We hadn’t known that they’d be sent to Korengal Valley, which became an epicentre of the war. So we were far away from the American press offices in Baghdad and Jalalabad and from official control of any kind. It was between the men and us. Also, when we were shooting in 2007, there was also a feeling among the boots-on-the-ground military that they were not well loved by the Department of Defence. They were stretched to the limit and tired. They wanted people to know.”
Certainly, for the unit that appears in the film – the Second Platoon, B Company, 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment of the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team, to be precise – the living conditions at Restrepo are dreadful.
“What I’d say is that the film does show counter-insurgency on the cheap,” says Hetherington. “But having spent time out there I can say that saying the valley was representative of the war is like saying that Detroit is representative of America or that Liverpool is representative of England. And I was born in Liverpool, so I know that’s not true.”
Restrepo, the winner of the Grand Jury Prize at this year's Sundance Film Festival, is the third documentary to have grossed more than $1 million in the US this year, and one of an ongoing series of politically themed box- office hits. Is it the case that we now need to go to the cinema to get any kind of real news?
“Sebastian and I are lucky in this respect, because the film came about through 10 trips that were funded by Vanity Fair initially. The best journalism comes through spending time. And time is money. Journalism is under-resourced. When I come home to the UK, I find myself surrounded by opinion pieces and editorial. I don’t want to know what some 25-year-old thinks about the war in Afghanistan. I want real reporting.”
In this spirit, Hetherington and Junger will be returning to Afghanistan in the next few months. I wonder how, after all his close calls in combat zones, Hetherington can face another tour of duty.
“You do see some awful things. But one of the reasons I do this is because I can, if that makes sense. And people seem to respond well for the most part. Good documentary should build bridges between communities, between audiences in the West and the rest of the world. We live so well in the West we sometimes forget about how our wealth comes from them. So that’s why I keep doing it. Besides, the film business end of things can be just as tricky as shooting out there.”
