a5c7b9f00b What does it mean to lead men in war? What does it mean to come home? Hell and Back Again is a cinematically revolutionary film that asks and answers these questions with a power and intimacy no previous film about the conflict in Afghanistan has been able to achieve. It is a masterpiece in the cinema of war.
This documentary was pretty good. As a 100% disabled Vietnam Marine, I found the story before his wound and his rehab at home very interesting. What I do not understand is how they could have committed such an egregious error of saying, '...the medics could not save the Marine.' To be glib, the medics could not save the Marine, as there are no medics in the Marine Corps; US Marines are provided Navy Corpsman, established by US Congress in 1898. Other than this error, this is a fairly interesting documentary. I enjoyed his rehab at home very much; I found it to be very telling about the effects of war. Hopefully, they will edit better in the future.
"Hell and Back Again" is a film that was inexplicably nominated for an Oscar. I say inexplicably not because of the subject matter but because the film just seemed to be lacking and didn't seem finished. Yet, oddly, it came close to winning the Oscar for the best documentary feature of the year.<br/><br/>The film follows a marine, Nathan Harris, from his tour of duty in Afghanistan to his life at home following his severe injury in action. It goes back and forth again and again to both locations and the transitions back and forth are a bit jarring. So what did I think? Well, some of the film is quite good--such as seeing the tension and hellish battle conditions the men go through. But it also feels like they just ran out of money and stopped making the film--with so much unanswered and Harris's fate very, very uncertain. The film just seems to stop...and is maddening to watch because of this.
Working alone with a camera and his ingenuity, Dennis captured the surreality of firefights with an invisible enemy and the frustration of displaced civilians.