Operation Homecoming - Writing the Wartime Experience
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Actor: Brian Turner, Jack Lewis, James Salter, Robert Duvall, Sharon D. AllenBrand: New Video
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.78:1
Running Time: 81 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2008-01-15
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: DOCURAMA
Product features:
- This pioneering film illuminates the extraordinary experiences of American servicemen and women through their own powerful stories. Based on the acclaimed NEA-sponsored book of the same name, this "eloquent and moving" (Entertainment Weekly) film offers a profound look at the lives of those serving in America's armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. Distinguished actors like Robert D
DVD Reviews of Operation Homecoming - Writing the Wartime Experience
DVD Review: Soldiers as Poets
Summary: 5 Stars
If war brings the unexpected, this was one of those experiences for the authors who were sent to Iraq to teach workshops to the troops. They found the common fighting man and women could write with prose that made their own pale in comparison. These are their words, their videos, their boredom, and their guilt. It is their attempt to make sense of a senseless situation that challenges a soldier's values, emotions, reality, and equilibrium.
All the nobility of war is shattered when convoys must run over little children sent in their paths by Iraqi irregulars to stop them, so they can get a clearer shot. Guilt, overriding, permeating guilt that will sear the mind for a lifetime appears in one moment of action, one decision, one hesitation to act. Boredom, unrelenting, for hours that turns into days. What is there to do? Cards, wrestling, boxing, reading, sleeping and writing. Action relieves the bonds of ennui, only to realize that the friend you went out with, didn't come back. Humor, a salve against reality and fear, comes in spontaneous spurts. It provides a relief from guilt and boredom.
Training teaches men to do what they have learned a lifetime not to do--to kill, without thought, without feeling. Training and values come into conflict. Training wins, barely. It brings out hatred for the enemy that killed a friend, or the hatred that comes from having made the decision to kill. They hate the victim for making them do the unthinkable. The war with oneself begins. It will never end. There will be no morphine to make it go away. There will never be victory against the onslaught of thoughts that will assault the self and its well-being.
The non-combatants fare no better. They will lie to the dying trooper of the 101st Airborne who asks why his feet are cold. The medic tells him there is swelling that causes poor circulation. The toes on one foot are gone. He rationalizes; he hasn't been entirely dishonest. He gives him a smile that says he will be okay. The trooper is relieved. They will change dressings from wounds that fester, that smell, that have pus and sand, that repels them, that makes them feel guilt for their own revulsion. They want the wounded to stop coming, if only they will stop coming, but they don't.
Soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen, veterans reflect on their experiences, the reality that "the world," civilians and home, have no idea what they went through, mortal moments that cannot be explained, the disillusion that their near-death experiences went unreported, were unheard of.
This black and white film, well-narrated by Robert Duvall and Stacey Keech, brings to life the experiences of veterans from World War II to the present. Their writing, their videos, and cartoons, revealed their own way of dealing with the life and death that surrounded them. Their decision to avenge a nation or defend it, to save the world or bring democracy, dissolves in the first concussion from the mortar round that falls too close. It becomes dependence on your friend to ensure your survival, as you ensure his. It is not about a nation's pride, but the wrenching fear that jolts the entire body with a feeling of impotence, terror and adrenaline.
There are also pictures of those that do not speak. Almost all are smiling faces or martial poses in dress blues, West Point Cadet Gray, battle dress, nuptials, fathers or mothers holding spouses or children, high school pictures and anniversaries. They are the reminders of people who once lived, who live now only in memories.
This one hour and twenty minute experience is sobering, and is recommended for viewing by anyone considering taking up arms and going in harm's way. It's message is apolitical. It's message is that war is futile and destructive beyond measure to the body and the human spirit, that coming home without scars is irrational, that coming home with them is human but destructive.
Perhaps stories like this, are the only good that can come from war. If you have to miss one, miss war, and see this instead.
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Description of Operation Homecoming - Writing the Wartime Experience
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