Theatre of war
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Daniel Nelson
Battle for Haditha will certainly be controversial. The real question is whether its any good. Like all docudramas, it raises the issue of the ethics of imaginatively reconstructing a real event in this case, the retaliatory massacre of 24 Iraqis after a roadside bomb killed two US soldiers and presenting it as a drama. I approached it confident of my disapproval: film is so vivid that it sticks in the memory and however much you remind yourself that its not real, that its an imaginative version of events, sharpened for dramatic effect, somehow the images gain a life of their own and become facts. The dangers of such blurring are heightened when few viewers know what happened in the clash in the western province of Al Anbar on 19 November 2005, and virtually none will have any knowledge of the people involved. In addition, many of the cast are ex-Marines or Iraqi civilians who have fled to Jordan and the script is partly improvised and partly based on hundreds of interviews with Iraqis. Inevitably, therefore, the film will be seen as reality. Judgements will be made about US soldiers, about Iraqis, about the war on the basis of what the film shows. Instinctively, I shy away from the docudrama concept. Safer to stick with the traditional documentary approach of recording what happened and reporting what was seen and heard. I know, I know objectivity is a phantom, and documentary film-makers biases, preconceptions and misconceptions affect the way they cut, edit and shape their material. But at least the idea of a line albeit shifting and ungraspable between straight documentary and docudrama, between fact and imaginative interpretation, is maintained. However, in this particular case, my views have softened. Director-writer-producer Nick Broomfield has said that his aim is to open up the eyes, minds and hearts of the world and to bring empathy to all of the people affected by this war. We may not be able to unite in our political, social or religious views, but perhaps we can unite in the commonality of our humanity. Audiences will not be concerned with the logistics of the incident, of exactly who did what to whom and when; but they might be provoked into thinking a little more about the humanity of all those concerned, whether infantrymen, insurgents or ordinary Iraqis. The characters/participants all have hopes and fears, beliefs and motives, and those hopes, fears, beliefs and motives are far subtler and less rigid than stereotypes suggest. Once or twice the directors determination to be even-handed and fair to all within its 90-minute running time, to show gray as well as black and white, to present people in their complexity rather than as caricatures, almost becomes a parody of itself. Several scenes feel as though they have been shoe-horned in to prove moral equivalence between Iraqis and Americans. Overall, however, its a brave attempt to show the stress and brutality of war, the plight of those caught up in conflict, and to ask questions about culpability. The least sympathetic are the military high command and the insurgents handlers. Both are portrayed as high on ideology and short on humanity. To the extent that Broomfield makes audiences think about what its like to be a young Marine fighting for his own survival and for his country, why people detonate roadside bombs, what its like to live in a combat zone, this film and its docudrama approach is justified. But I still wish the cautionary line, Based on true events, was more prominent. * UK cinema release: 1 February. Channel 4 screening and DVD : 17 March |