Battle for Haditha

I saw this film at it's London premiere at the Odeon West End as part of the London Film Festival.

I guess Nick Broomfield was getting sick & tired of seeing Michael Moore ripping off his Documentary style so made this his Second feature film in as many years. Like the earlier film, Ghosts (www.imdb.com/title/tt0872202/), the Battle for Haditha is based on fact.

The film tells story of the events of November 19, 2005, when a troop of US Marines exact revenge for an earlier attack which killed one of their number in the Iraqi town of Haditha.

The Film focuses on three different viewpoints, the first of Iraqi insurgents, which in this case isn't some mad Mullah but an old man, who we learn is an ex-Army officer and his son. The second focuses on a Corporal Ruiz, a young Marine who you feel wants to be anywhere but Iraqi and the finally the film focuses on a young Iraqi couple and their extended family.

The film is shot Cinéma-vérité style and at times is very harrowing. But it's to Broomfields credit that he to my mind he doesn't simply demonize the US soldiers. Instead you get to understand how young men put in a situation that you the viewer couldn't understand let alone cope with, could just lose it after a comrade is killed. Likewise, in the films portrayal of the insurgent fighters Broomfield manages to make you think what would you do, if, as in the film, your a professional soldier made jobless by a an Occupying force. How do you feed your family, and wouldn't you feel some resentment to the occupation forces for making you jobless. But it's in the Iraqi families, caught between the US forces and the Insurgents that the film is at it's best. They can't do the right thing for doing wrong. It is they who bear the brunt of either Insurgency retaliation or US Forces heavy-handedness. They who ultimately will and are the losers in Film.

This is a powerful film which deals with all aspects of the problem fair mindedly, but doesn't shy away from the truth. Don't let those who haven't watched the film put you off seeing the best portrayal of the War on Terror to date.

Black Narcissus

http://www.imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=14198203

It wasn't until very recently that I'd heard of Nick Broomfield and realised he made a couple of documentaries in the early 1980s that I still vividly remember namely SOLDIER GIRLS and THE CHICKEN RANCH . Knowing this I then made a point of catching his recent docudrama GHOSTS about the drowning of 23 illegal Chinese immigrants at Morcombe Bay . I was expecting it to be one of those " blame whitey " polemics , but this is not how it turned out at all with the Chinese gang master being one the most despicable and immoral villains I've seen on the screen in a long time . With this I mind I made a point of buying a ticket for Broomfield's next dramatic venture THE BATTLE OF HADITHA which was being shown at the Edinburgh filmhouse with a Q & A session being held after the showing . Despite the filmhouse brochure proclaiming that this was an even handed film with the marine characters exclusively played by former marines , there was a slight doubt at the back of my mind that we'd be watching guardinista / Michael Moore inspired anti military , anti American rubbish where the Americans are goose stepping Nazis while the Iraqis are entirely peace loving pacifists

I needn't have worried because Broomfield has made a film that will be remembered as being the moral and artistic yardstick as to how other films dealing with the conflict will be judged . Whatever your opinion of the invasion of Iraq ( I like the vast majority of Brits was against it ) there is no way you can heap criticism on TBOH for being pro or anti propaganda for either side . Sure it's anti war but does point out the dangers and frustration faced by both serving soldiers and innocent civilians in a war zone . If there is any type of villain it's probably Al Qaeda itself . Certainly Broomfield deserves congratulations for making a very subtle point that there's a difference between indigenous secular Sunni insurgents who are fighting for their country and those outsiders who want to turn Iraq in to an Islamic theocracy . This probably works best in the scene where the Iraqi insurgent breaks down in tears saying he wished he'd never planted the bomb that leads to the massacre while the sheik rejoices with barely concealed glee that this is a wonderful propaganda coup for Iraq , the more civilians killed by the occupation forces means more recruits for Al Qaeda

If I do have any artistic problems with the mis-en-scene it's that some of the acting is different from what an avid cinema goer is used to . This is in no way a criticism because much of the acting is powerful especially Elliot Ruiz as Cpl Rameirez , even more amazing when you consider there's very few professional actors cast . It's just that when you're very used to life long lighter than life or larger than life performances by ( Insert well regarded big name actor here ) you are slighter aware how different the acting is from what you usually see . Let me repeat though that it's not a real criticism

Respect too to Mr Broomfield for giving a very informative Q & A session after the showing where he was once again very even handed . He did talk a lot of sense where he said that in his humble opinion it should be Bush and Blair who should be on trial instead of the marines which led me to start a round of applause and that peace is coming to Iraq down to the fact that foreign Jihidists are murdering many Iraqis just for the sake of it . He did trip himself up later during the session when he claimed that " Britain and America spent several years arming both sides during the Iran - Iraq war " which led to me shouting " RUBBISH " but there were no hard feelings on either side and I genuinely look forward to Nick's next contribution to narrative cinema . Come to think of it if a Brit can make something so even handed why do we have to endure offensive Anglophobic garbage coming out of Hollywood studios like THE PATRIOT and THE DEVIL'S OWN ?

I just saw this movie and found it very moving. I have spent some time with Iraq veterans and I feel this movie did a very accurate job portraying what they went through.

I think it's important to point out that 12 of the actors, including Ruiz, who plays Corporal Ramirez, are themselves Iraq veterans. Here are some quotes from Ramirez: "I was 17 when I was sent to Iraq, during the initial invasion. We pushed all the way up to Tikrit and I ended up being wounded, I almost lost my life. It's crazy, people don't know the type of things that we go through. That's what I like about the film, it shows that." The concept of taking Iraq refugees and ex-marines to make a movie with no script is brilliant. I felt the improvisation from these actors was likely better and more realistic than anything professional actors could have pulled off. I was also impressed with the production values, especially since no US funds were available for a fair and honest portrayal of such events.

After reading through some of the reviews I felt I had to chime in, though I am sure almost no one will read this. Before I give my observations on the movie itself I would just like to point out that many who stated this movie was an accurate portrayal clearly has no experience or expertise that would qualify them to make the statement. Something I hope people keep in mind when reading other reviews. As a Marine who actually served in Haditha as well as many other locations, reading many of the reviews sickened me because it shows how little people actually understand, just as I usually wear a long sleeved shirt because my USMC tattoo brings on questions, praise, or derision from the clueless masses who for some reason believe they have some insight to any reality outside their own convenient world.

That said, I feel this movie is much better then most. The film clearly had an agenda and bias, and completely off the mark in terms of representing military tactics, equipment, etc... that is pretty much standard for any movie. I appreciated how the movie wasn't overly dramatic when showing issues faced by and actions of the various parties. One thing I wish the movie did take in to account is bullets pass through those walls like paper. I would wager that a large number of civilians were killed simply during an exchange of fire between the Marines, fighters, and then civilians who may have just seen a loved one fall. I have seen this happen often and I hope one day that reality is brought to light rather then showing young Marines on a blind rampage. However, no one knows exactly what happened except those who were there, and even that "reality or truth" depends on the perspective and state of mind of the observer.

Another positive is how the movie doesn't really show any right or wrong, good or bad, that things just are and "sh!t happens". If anything, I do think that is the true agenda of the movie even if there was a bias in its portrayal. Also, I appreciated the use of Iraqi dialect of Arabic instead of modern standard, Egyptian, Syrian, etc. Another accuracy plus was how close the town/city looked compared to cities of the region. Though clearly not Haditha, I have not seen any movie closer to the truth in that regard.

On a personal note, I think many of the comments made by Cpl Ramirez were spot on if a bit staged. I am not going to comment on any particular comment because you either understand or you don't. Also, and I know this is a bit of a stretch, but I refuse to give credibility to any one who may seek to either attack or defend (verbally) our war fighters because context is everything and the most people don't have or understand the context.

I recommend this movie to anyone who is able to take if for what it is worth by dropping the expectation of realism while not adding meaning where there is not. Also, I hope people realize that no matter how many actual Marine veterans or Iraqi's (most westernized), the film is a product of the film maker and subject to their interpretation. I only wish I could have had my say about the movie sooner, if only to plant the seed that people should take this movie, and the other reviews including mine, with a grain of salt.

In this new film that few in America will see in theaters, the English documentary filmmaker Nick Broomfield has taken his skill set into a narrative feature of an actual event of the Iraq war and dramatized and embellished it with often harrowing realism. Broomfield has humanized an American atrocity, the so-called "Battle for Haditha" of November 19, 2005, in which several dozen Iraqi civilians in the eponymous town were slaughtered by a small squad of Marines in retaliation for a hidden road bomb that killed one of their men and gravely injured two others. Broomfield humanizes everybody. The "insurgents" who plant the bomb, paid to do it by Al Qaida in Iraq people whom they don't trust or like, are a man who was in the Iraqi army destroyed by Paul Bremer, and his grown son, who sells DVD's to American soldiers. The civilians who happen to live near the road where the bomb goes off are seen up close, a child fascinated by chickens, a big family, a circumcision party, a couple with a child on the way who are deeply in love. All these are made real and known to the audience by the film. But so are the Marines, especially the main one, Corporal Ramirez (Elliot Ruiz), who though barely twenty, is so battle-weary he is haunted by dreams and guilt and cannot sleep. It's Ramirez who, cracking under the strain and the sleeplessness and given the go-ahead by corps superiors off somewhere with electronic maps (distant kills are like a video game), leads the rampage of murders, then collapses and weeps when rising for another day.

All this is very interesting, and the killings are similar to those in De Palma's flashy but so very slipshod 'Redacted,' but so very, very different in this new context with the simpler shoot--just a digital camera that you can forget about after a while, whereas De Palma rubs your nose in the multiple media feeds, the other American soldiers less specific here but cruder and perhaps more authentic; some of them like Ruiz were in the war themselves, and served, and know the way to act without being told.

But what is extraordinary in Broomfield's film isn't any of this so much as one thing that typically, American reviewers have hardly seemed to notice. This is: that not only are the Iraqis seen up close, they are real Iraqis, speaking Iraqi Arabic, and many of them, like the young actor who plays Ramirez, also on the other side as victims and non-combatants, veterans of the war, now living where the film was made and where they fled to, in Jordan. When Ramirez shows a big scar on his leg and says he almost lost it, it's Ruiz's real battle scar. Ruiz's performance has a new kind of conviction.

Why would Americans' notice that about the Iraqi Arabic, the authentic Iraqi non-actors playing the roles of insurgents and local inhabitants, and why would they care? In fact even the Choir to whom this anti-war movie is preaching are as ignorant and indifferent to the specifics of Middle Eastern cultural reality as the naive and headstrong men who got us into the war and the poor and uneducated boys who have pursued it and died in it and come back maimed and mentally damaged from it. But in the future, this may come to matter, and even be understood by American Iraq war veterans. Language is important, and culture is important. One shouldn't have to say that. But if it were understood, the imperial indifference of "bringing democracy to the Middle East" would crumble, and it wouldn't seem so easy to think that killing a hundred thousand civilians would make us friends.

Using real Iraqis and a lead Marine who's an Iraq war vet were master strokes, but this doesn't excuse the film from being in many ways self-damagingly roughshod and, despite the multiple viewpoints, still skewed at times. The Iraqi civilians who become victims are given a fairy tale simplicity, their complicity or involvement in weapons and explosives, though alluded to, not specified for any of the victims. There needed to be something more specific about a Marine other than Ramirez.

The chief bad guys, which seems right, are those at one remove, the Marine supervisors away from the front, and the local imam whose encouraging the locals to ignore the danger and hold a celebration is a cynical gesture to worsen the casualties and make them seem more cruel to the media.

Broomfield has used blunt instruments to shape his story, and his ending is a little muddled (partly from necessity, since the accused Marines hadn't yet been tried). Nonetheless the authenticity, particularly of the Iraqis, but of the whole scene, wins The Battle of Haditha a special place in the less-than-stellar roster of Iraq war films thus far delivered.