full battle rattle!

I have been awaiting the arrival of Full Battle Rattle ever since I saw the preview at Film Forum. (Side note: Film Forum has provided an essential service for me in New York -- great movies. Yeah, I mean, you could go to IFC, but for me, FF is the best place to watch independent films in New York. The location right near the #1 Train Wooster St. stop and New York Sports Club doesn't hurt either).

I have to admit that I don't have the best taste in narrative films. I usually go for romantic comedies or dramas. But I do pride myself in being able to assess documentary films quite well, both from my experience in making them and from evaluating them for film festivals. You have to see this movie for yourself (if you happen to be in New York, San Francisco, or Seattle), but basically it's about two documentary filmmakers who travel to the Mojave desert in California where mock-Iraqi town have been created. Soldiers who are about to be sent to Iraq first have to endure two weeks of this simulated environment. There are two basic sides to this place: (1) the soldiers' base and (2) the Iraqi town populated by Iraqis (played by Iraqi immigrants and Iraqi-Americans) and insurgents (played by experienced military soldiers). Each of the filmmakers inhabits one of the two sides and films the experience of one infantry.

After a few days, the soldiers begin to forget that they are living in a simulated environment and start to experience the effects of "real" war. The Iraqi actors are each given a role (shop owner, sheriff, mayor, etc), and they must play their role as accurately as possible. After the mayor's son is brutally shot, a civil war breaks out and chaos ensues. The insurgents get the upper-hand and the soldiers fail in their role as peacemakers in this faux-invasion of a mock Iraq.

The brilliance of this film is the blurring of the lines between what real and make-believe. Normally, the filmmakers receive credit for achieving this tension. However, I would argue that they simply chose a fascinating subject and captured the situation as it unraveled. The success of the film has less to do with brilliant film making and editing, and more to do with recognizing the capacity for this simulated environment to provide a well-rounded account of what might be happening in Iraq. More succinctly, this film about a fake Iraqi town provides insight to what a real Iraqi town might be like -- much more accurately and candidly than any other news media. Confronting this simulation was challenging -- the scripted situations often created tense relations between the Iraqis and the soldiers. But the simulation cannot convey the actual war, the living towns, the unscripted confrontations.

This film forces you to recognize your own illusions about the war and compels you to confront the realities of both soldiers and Iraqi citizens in an uneasy way that actual news reports have failed to do.