Beyond the Multiplex

"Operation Homecoming": Iraq vets write a new chapter in the history of war literature
Every new documentary about the Iraq war faces the same conundrum: We may support or oppose the war as a matter of political opinion -- that is, I assume there are still people outside the White House who support it -- but most of us want to ignore it as much as possible. I don't suppose that Richard E. Robbins' film "Operation Homecoming," based on a National Endowment for the Arts project encouraging soldiers to write about their experiences, will be immune from this problem, but it does go at it head-on, in deeply moving fashion. For those with a literary bent and an open mind, it's highly worth seeing.

As acclaimed memoirist and Vietnam vet Tobias Wolff tells Robbins' camera, a civilization that asks young people to go overseas and fight a war, and then doesn't want to know what they actually do, see, feel and think, is in advanced decay. In literary terms, the work by soldiers assembled in "Operation Homecoming" is a mixed bag, ranging from MFA-grade poetry to humorous essays to technology-laden combat scenes to basic, unadorned prose. Some of it is overly ambitious and some is not ambitious enough, but all of it captures the daily boredom and terror of warfare, an experience completely divorced from the political and policy disputes that lie behind it.

Given the pseudo-scandals surrounding the NEA in recent decades, Robbins has to steer the film clear of opinions about the war's purpose and morality, but that actually serves the film's central purpose. He introduces us gracefully to the soldier-authors in brief interviews, and then finds ways to illustrate their stories or poems, without resorting to dramatic reconstructions or similar cheeseball tactics.

Former military blogger Colby Buzzell's high-octane tale of a street shootout is accompanied by still-frame, comic-book-style animation, while Marine Lt. Col. Mike Strobl's simple story about escorting a dead Marine's remains back to his Wyoming hometown is set against peaceful, unpopulated footage of the locations, ending with the dead soldier's grave. On the evidence, I'd guess that Buzzell is a war critic and Strobl is a gung-ho patriot, but I can't be quite sure and it doesn't much matter. Hearing their stories in their own words -- something few of us, pro- or antiwar, bother to do -- is the entire point. (The material is read aloud by various actors, including Beau Bridges, Robert Duvall, Aaron Eckhart and Blair Underwood.)

Lending a tragic context and depth to the proceedings, Robbins also interviews war writers of older generations, from historian Paul Fussell (a World War II vet) to Korean War veteran James Salter, Vietnam vets like Wolff, Tim O'Brien and poet Yusef Komunyakaa, and Gulf War I vet Anthony Swofford. "Operation Homecoming" at first seems like a modest enterprise, a document of a few guys' paths to personal catharsis. But the sense of damaged intensity found in all these men's writing -- and found in war lit since the classical age -- builds to a powerful crescendo, and the haunting poem that ends the film (by infantryman cum academic poet Brian Turner), in which the ghosts of American and Iraqi dead confront each other on the banks of the Tigris, is a showstopper.

"Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience" opens Feb. 9 at Film Forum in New York. Other engagements should follow. The literary anthology "Operation Homecoming: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Home Front in the Words of U.S. Troops and Their Families" was published by Random House last September.

Fast forward: The Stasi regime and its "Decomposition of the Soul"; McSweeney's new DVD magazine
After seeing "The Lives of Others," the aforementioned new drama about life under East Germany's communist regime and its notorious secret police, Cold War history buffs may need to catch Nina Toussaint and Massimo Iannetta's documentary "Decomposition of the Soul," a meditation on the dreary, paranoid world of the Stasi. Based on interviews with two long-imprisoned East German dissidents and the memoirs of the late Jürgen Fuchs, one of the Stasi's most famous literary victims and critics, this movie can only leave you asking unhappy questions.

These include: How did an allegedly civilized country come straight out of a dictatorship based on murder and physical terror and straight into another one that was based on psychological terrorism and brainwashing? "Decomposition of the Soul" can't answer that, and it might be too slow and morbid for American viewers without an existing interest in the subject. I suppose it's meant as a curative to trendy young Germans' nostalgic attitude toward the fake modernist furniture, fake Western pop music and fake Coca-Cola of the East German period. (Now playing at Film Forum in New York.)

In livelier news, McSweeney's Press has been publishing its DVD-only magazine Wholphin for almost a year now, and the third issue just hit my mailbox. It's a highly enjoyable treasure trove of rare or completely unseen short films, including a 49-minute mini-feature made by Alexander Payne before "Election," "About Schmidt" and "Sideways"; a half-hour documentary about a 13-year-old Yemeni girl who refuses to wear the veil; cult fave Bob Odenkirk's new "A Bee and a Cigarette"; a five-minute performance-art piece from Dennis Hopper (truly!); and acclaimed Swedish animator Jonas Odell's "Never Like the First Time." There's also a bonus disc featuring the second half of Adam Curtis' controversial "The Power of Nightmares" (the first episode is available on Wholphin No. 2).

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