The infantryman's struggle in Afghanistan

If you have an interest in the military campaign in Afghanistan, or in modern film-making — and if you have a strong stomach — I would strongly recommend Hell and Back Again, a contender in the Best Documentary category at the Oscars this weekend. Despite winning the World Documentary prize at Sundance last year, it had a very limited cinema release (not unusually for a documentary) and is yet to break even worldwide, though that may be about to change.

The main difference with the other equally impressive but better-known documentaries on the Afghan campaign, Restrepo and Armadillo, is the film’s individual focus. It concentrates on a single US Marine, Sergeant Nathan Harris, following him through a tour in Afghanistan, and after his return home. A few days before the end of his tour, Sergeant Harris was shot in the backside, and suffered complex and messy wounds as the bullet ricocheted through his hip and thigh. Surgeons saved his leg, but it required major reconstruction. He was utterly determined to stay in the Marine Corps, and indeed to return to combat. The film covers the early months of painful rehabilitation — and the equally painful readjustment to the petty frustrations of civilian life.

It is not in any sense a satisfying film. Sgt Harris is not presented as a hero: the film-maker, Danfung Dennis, has commented that ‘he was sometimes a tough character to like’. There is little concession to narrative. Dennis was a freelance photojournalist with no previous film experience, embedded with the Marines, who realised his Canon 5D camera was able to shoot video. He adapted the microphone, together with a minimum of other equipment which he carried with him; he filmed alone. This makes the technical accomplishment all the more impressive (it won a second award at Sundance for cinematography). I have no pretensions as a film critic, but the battle scenes are remarkable, given the challenges Dennis must have faced.

There is also a great deal of skill in the way the material has been selected and edited, but at the same time, it is allowed to speak for itself: like Restrepo and Armadillo, the film does not feel it is editorialising or overly manipulating the viewer. Dennis had clearly earned the respect and confidence of the unit as he travelled with them, and their behaviour is authentic, both in Afghanistan and back home. The New York Times reports that when Dennis asked the family of one of the Marines for permission to use footage of his death, they granted it without seeing it: an impressive if sad testament. (The attitude of the Marine Corps was less impressive. They stopped Sgt Harris and his wife from attending Sundance, though they have since relented, and Harris will be at the Oscar ceremony in full dress uniform.)

In some ways this is a very American-seeming film, but there are several reasons why British viewers might want to seek it out. First, for those feeling patriotic about the Oscars, the producers are British. Second, like Armadillo, the action is set in Helmand — in this case, Garmsir, in the south of the province — and the time is July 2009, the bloodiest month of the British campaign, the moment when it suddenly gripped the nation’s attention. The terrain, the nature of the fighting, and the whole ‘feel’ of the Garmsir sequences is representative of what British forces were experiencing further up the Helmand River that same summer.

Some commentators have said that the film shows the ‘futility’ of the Afghan campaign, but this involves a certain amount of projection. The scenes of junior officers and senior NCOs like Harris attempting to win the ‘hearts and minds’ of local elders (like similar scenes in Restrepo and Armadillo) are as painful to watch, in their way, as the scenes of injury and death. But from the point of view of an individual unit or infantryman, most conflicts can seem similarly chaotic and even pointless: this is part of the nature of war.

This is the third and most important reason to see the film: that what it is really about is not this particular unit, or even this particular campaign, but the life of the infantryman. Clearly this life has changed in many ways, even in the last decade, but in some fundamental respects, it would be recognised instantly by Sgt Harris’ predecessors in the Second World War, the American Civil War, even the Napoleonic Wars: the endless running, shooting, shouting, sweating, swearing, humping heavy loads, carrying wounded comrades to safety — and then returning home to wives, friends, fellow countrymen, and wondering how much they really understand. Not much, is the answer, but a little more as a result of films like this.

Matt Cavanagh was a special adviser to the Labour government and wrote a cover story on Afghanistan for The Spectator last year.

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