New & revealing realities in Restrepo (2010)

To start out with, there’s a quote in Corrigan & White (2009) that explains the relationships between documentary films and its viewers,

as well as the meanings behind them. “As with narrative movies, the relationship between documentary films and the cultural and historical

expectations of viewers plays a large part in how these movies are understood and what meanings we find in them(Corrigan&White289).” The book says that some people may watch a film for scientific, social, or some other kind of “conceptual” information.

The documentary film Restrepo (2010) revealed new and ignored realities to its audience. Coming into the film, some people may have never witnessed that of what the film showed us. Some never knew the details of the life of the everyday soldier until watching the film. These new realities could be us watching a close friend of another get shot and killed, or witnessing a bloody, dead body, and experiencing the

emotional ups and down the soldiers constantly had to face. These are new realities to some people in the audience, because when they came into the film, they may have had no idea.

He thought he was to blame for a fellow soldier's death.

Me personally, I’ve always known of the bloody, sad and unfortunate circumstances soldiers in the military have had to face every day, but of course it is different when you actually see it in a documentary. It’s different, not because it’s shocking, but because you get used to the characters in the film, and so when one dies and some of the others become upset, you feel like you, too, have lost a friend. I personally could not connect to any of the characters except for one soldier who was psychologically tormented by the thought that his friend and fellow soldier, their apparent “best one”, died on the battlefield supposedly because of him.

I felt for the man as you could see genuine pain and sorrow in his eyes and hear the depressing tone in his voice. Something about his personality and sorrow was just different from everyone else’s; I found

it easier to connect with, and to feel empathy for him, whereas with Restrepo, a man whom I didn’t even know, nor really ever saw or connected with, I looked at as just another death in the army. It is my belief, after all, that when they volunteer for the army, they are knowingly setting themselves up for pain, sorrow and death, a selfishly conscious decision. However, with that one man in particular, who I know not by name, I was still able to relate and connect. I looked at him, not as that man that knew what he was getting into when he voluntarily joined (like how I felt with the rest), but as a man who may have been misguided in his decision, and was forced to live with his consequences in the most psychologically tormenting way. I can only hope he gets better with time.

Getting back to Corrigan & White (2009), I feel it’s important to tie the political reality into the documentary. One political reality I think people should realize by viewing the film is that the government tells us all these lies about the wars our country dies in (not fight; what do we have to fight for?), but in reality what the soldiers go through is not what the government communicates to us. Here, we see that these soldiers have been brought in a war-zone just to make a road? Men die, families’ lives are disrupted, and soldiers kill, be killed, and run for their lives...just to make a road? I was not entirely sure

what these soldiers were doing there, as I wasn’t able to follow that in the documentary, and I don’t think that even they knew, but the whole thing was just pointless to me. There were men, women, and children who lost their lives for nothing (Corrigan&White290).

In conclusion, the political reality here is that the government pushes propaganda onto its people by preaching things like, “Fight for our country, protect our citizens, and God Bless America,” yet there is nothing to fight for in the first place, nor has there been in several, several years. Not only that, but we never actually know what is really going on in these soldiers’ lives until we see what happens through their perspectives, and not the governments’ teeth. I believe the government has brainwashed its people to be “patriotic,” and to believe that we have something to fight for, when it’s all just propaganda to get them to do what they want them, the socially weak, to do. Unfortunately, that is just the sad and political truth in this, regardless of who may like it or not, and we've seen the effects in the documentary film.

Corrigan, Timothy, and Patricia White. Film Experience: an Introduction. 2nd ed. New York, NY: Bedford/St. Martins, 2009. 290. Print.

Corrigan, Timothy, and Patricia White. Film Experience: an Introduction. 2nd ed. New York, NY: Bedford/St. Martins, 2009. 289. Print.