Honesty is rare in films, even documentaries. So it's particularly thrilling to find that Janus Metz's aggressive, boldly-directed story of Danish soldiers in Afghanistan doesn't pretend that they don't find war to be the most exciting thing they could ever experience. That isn't to say that Metz doesn't present a rounded view of what these young men go through, from tedium and confusion to gut-clenching horror and spiritual anomie. Some will come back from the war physically broken, many of them scarred in ways that may take years to become fully visible. But many of them will want to come back, because that's where the action is.
The soldiers whom Metz follows (after a final night in Denmark, shown as a blur of booze, erotic dancers, and blasting, Rammstein-like heavy metal) are part of a mixed Danish and British force manning forward operating base (FOB) Armadillo in the Helmand region of southern Afghanistan in 2009. Unlike the desert or mountainous parts of the country that many recent combat documentaries like Restrepo have focused on, Helmand is a flat and green spread of land cut by canals, fields of crops, farmers' walled compounds, and scattered lines of trees. Nearly all of those elements make it a guerrilla's paradise, meaning that the Taliban will ambush, snipe at, and bomb the Danes for months on end, disappearing each time like ghosts, unseen.
Stuck in between the Taliban and the increasingly frustrated Danes are the local farmers, who look on with weary, bleak humor as yet another crop of brash and heavily-equipped Westerners come tromping through their fields (crushing crops along the way) and asking for help in fighting the Taliban. "You have guns, they have guns," one local explains in exasperation. "If I talk, they'll cut my throat." For their part, the Danes -- few of whom seem to take any of their officers' counter-insurgency talk about gaining the locals' trust seriously -- give as much suspicion back as is directed at them. Talking about trying to determine which Afghans are civilians and which are Taliban, one soldier complains, "too bad we can't tell them apart," echoing statements made in countless other such wars throughout the centuries. Like all other soldiers, he just wants to fight.
If Metz's film, which has been a controversial success in Denmark, has a failing, it's that in the interest of pursuing that experiential kick of adrenaline, he doesn't allow us to get too close to any of the soldiers. In the opening scenes, we are given some very brief introductions to some of them, particularly a little squib of a kid they nickname Mini, and Kim, a medic who shares Mini's quiet, shy demeanor. Some of the other soldiers gain a particular kind of personality, particularly a loud, aggro-blond who later in the film can't stop nervously talking about his kills. Nobody speaks directly to the camera and there are few mini-story arcs to follow.
Metz cuts his narrative together like a Paul Greengrass thriller, skillfully covering the action from multiple viewpoints and bringing a hair-raising immediacy to even the quietest scenes. While some might accuse him of going for cheap thrills, Metz seems to be trying to deliver some simulacrum of the thrills and terrors that these adrenaline-punched soldiers are going through. He follows not just the highs but the lows, the raw fury at never seeing the enemy so adept at picking them off, the blistering terror that comes from the confusion when one unit hits the ground (the camera briefly showing leaves chopped off by zipping bullets just inches overhead), possibly being attacked by their fellow soldiers. In one telling sequence, Metz cuts from the soldiers playing a first-person shooter video game to them going on a night-time patrol; the irony of these men playing at imagined killing before going out to do the real thing is so apparent it doesn't need to be commented on. One look at these men's thrilled, terrified faces shows that they're perfectly aware of what they're doing.
The soldiers whom Metz follows (after a final night in Denmark, shown as a blur of booze, erotic dancers, and blasting, Rammstein-like heavy metal) are part of a mixed Danish and British force manning forward operating base (FOB) Armadillo in the Helmand region of southern Afghanistan in 2009. Unlike the desert or mountainous parts of the country that many recent combat documentaries like Restrepo have focused on, Helmand is a flat and green spread of land cut by canals, fields of crops, farmers' walled compounds, and scattered lines of trees. Nearly all of those elements make it a guerrilla's paradise, meaning that the Taliban will ambush, snipe at, and bomb the Danes for months on end, disappearing each time like ghosts, unseen.
Stuck in between the Taliban and the increasingly frustrated Danes are the local farmers, who look on with weary, bleak humor as yet another crop of brash and heavily-equipped Westerners come tromping through their fields (crushing crops along the way) and asking for help in fighting the Taliban. "You have guns, they have guns," one local explains in exasperation. "If I talk, they'll cut my throat." For their part, the Danes -- few of whom seem to take any of their officers' counter-insurgency talk about gaining the locals' trust seriously -- give as much suspicion back as is directed at them. Talking about trying to determine which Afghans are civilians and which are Taliban, one soldier complains, "too bad we can't tell them apart," echoing statements made in countless other such wars throughout the centuries. Like all other soldiers, he just wants to fight.
If Metz's film, which has been a controversial success in Denmark, has a failing, it's that in the interest of pursuing that experiential kick of adrenaline, he doesn't allow us to get too close to any of the soldiers. In the opening scenes, we are given some very brief introductions to some of them, particularly a little squib of a kid they nickname Mini, and Kim, a medic who shares Mini's quiet, shy demeanor. Some of the other soldiers gain a particular kind of personality, particularly a loud, aggro-blond who later in the film can't stop nervously talking about his kills. Nobody speaks directly to the camera and there are few mini-story arcs to follow.
Metz cuts his narrative together like a Paul Greengrass thriller, skillfully covering the action from multiple viewpoints and bringing a hair-raising immediacy to even the quietest scenes. While some might accuse him of going for cheap thrills, Metz seems to be trying to deliver some simulacrum of the thrills and terrors that these adrenaline-punched soldiers are going through. He follows not just the highs but the lows, the raw fury at never seeing the enemy so adept at picking them off, the blistering terror that comes from the confusion when one unit hits the ground (the camera briefly showing leaves chopped off by zipping bullets just inches overhead), possibly being attacked by their fellow soldiers. In one telling sequence, Metz cuts from the soldiers playing a first-person shooter video game to them going on a night-time patrol; the irony of these men playing at imagined killing before going out to do the real thing is so apparent it doesn't need to be commented on. One look at these men's thrilled, terrified faces shows that they're perfectly aware of what they're doing.
