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Review: It's hard to really describe what this film
actually it. It's sort of a documentary, but most of it is not.
What “Operation Homecoming” was, was a program by the National
Endowment for the Arts to help record the history of the Iraq
war by encouraging soldiers and sailors to write about their
experiences. Some of it was fiction, some was poetry, still
others straight memoirs and even comics.
So what Robbins did, was to take a very small selection
[there were literally thousands of soldiers scribbling away for
this project] of these writings and turn them into a
mini-festival of short films based on these writings. Some use
actual war footage, others use actors, and one even was an
animatic (ultra-limited animation), whichever worked best to
serve the story in question. Not only that, they got some of the
better actors in Hollywood, such as Robert Duval and Beau
Bridges, to narrate them. The effect, which was a bit surprising
at first, worked extremely well.
Introducing the stories were the soldiers who wrote them, and
several writers, such as Anthony Swafford and Tobias Wolff
discussing their experiences in battle during previous wars,
mostly Vietnam. This is a most enlightening, heartbreaking, and
indeed entertaining look at the current unpleasantness in the
middle east, and is well worth a look when it comes out on cable
in the near future. If you can give it a look at the film forum,
it might be worth the bucks.
Eric Lurio
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