Life in the Korengal Valley was not all fun and games for Specialist Misha Pemble-Belkin, Ross Murphy, and the rest of Battle Company, 173rd US Airborne at Outpost Restrepo in Afghanistan (photo © Tim Hetherington)
RESTREPO: ONE PLATOON, ONE YEAR, ONE VALLEY (Sebastian Junger & Tim Hetherington, 2010)
Symphony Space, Leonard Nimoy Thalia
2537 Broadway at 95th St.
Sunday, October 17, 4:00 & 8:00
212-864-5400
www.restrepothemovie.com
www.symphonyspace.org
From June 2007 to July 2008, journalists Sebastian Junger (THE PERFECT STORM) and Tim Hetherington (LIBERIA: AN UNCIVIL WAR) made a total of ten trips to the dangerous Korengal Valley in Afghanistan, documenting the full deployment of Battle Company of the 173rd Airborne Brigade. With snipers hidden all around them, the fifteen soldiers of Second Platoon built a remote, strategic outpost they named Restrepo after PFC Juan Restrepo, the well-liked company medic who was killed early on. Junger and Hetherington film such men as Captain Dan Kearney, Staff Sergeant Kevin Rice, and Sergeant Brendan C. O’Byrne as they go about their daily duties, joking around, playing the guitar, meeting with Afghan locals to get information about the Taliban, and digging trenches while prepared to be shot at at any moment. The journalists took more than 150 hours of footage, supplemented with interviews with several of the soldiers after they were safely back at home base in Italy, talking about what they went through. There is nothing political about RESTREPO, nor does it pull at the heartstrings with melodramatic, overemotional scenes; instead, it depicts the harsh realities of battle, including the long stretches of boredom punctuated by sudden life-or-death situations. There is no narration, no one discusses the possible merits of the war, and no generals or politicians are on hand to defend America’s involvement in the region. There’s no ethnocentric yahooism, nor is there racist treatment of the mostly unseen enemy. It’s just war, pure and simple, seen from the perspective of men who chose to join the army and risk their lives for their country. The film won the documentary Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Sundance Festival and recently screened at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival at Lincoln Center.