Film
of the 2005 Human Rights Watch International Film Festival (HRWIFF)
Title:
Occupation: Dreamland
Directors:
Garrett Scott & Ian Olds, USA
Minutes:
78
Language:
English and Arabic with English subtitles
How
is it to be a soldier deployed in Iraq? It’s safe to say that the image of
guts and glory, the tagline of “An Army of One!” is not the reality of
serving in Iraq.
Occupation:
Dreamland, a new documentary that follows the
Army’s 82nd Airborne unit in the doomed city of Fallujah proves this to be all
too true.
The
film, which premiered in New York at the 2005 Human Rights Watch International
Film Festival (HRWIFF) in June, is a gloomy portrait of army life in the midst
of a war that is frustrating for everyone. This is no glorious war with a
glaringly apparent evil enemy and people utterly grateful for the intervention
of American soldiers. This is a sinking quagmire sucking in the soldiers who
often are reluctant pawns in the American agenda against terror.
Directors
Garrett Scott and Ian Olds set the unsettling tone of the documentary by picking
a crucial, simmering time during the war. In the winter of 2004, the 82nd
Airborne unit is charged with the mission of maintaining order and suppressing
resistance from insurgents in Fallujah, a crucial city between Baghdad and the
Jordanian border.
The
work and lives of these young soldiers speak of a never-ending tug-of-war
between sworn, unquestioning duty and disillusionment with their situation. They
are charged with ferreting out insurgents and maintaining an uneasy peace. But
at every turn they are met with increasingly hostile and angry Iraqis who resent
their presence.
At
first the soldiers gather strength from their sense of duty to the US belief
that their help is needed to root out Saddam Hussein’s “terrorist regime.”
But as their lackluster enlistment stories are revealed against the background
of their daily inquisitions of suspicious Iraqis, the soldiers’ frustrations
grow.
Staff
Sgt. Chris Corcione is the unlikely leader of this group. Formerly a long-haired
death metal band lead singer, the 28-year-old admits he impulsively joined the
army after feeling a lack of direction in his life. His sense of urgency and
frustration at the situation is palpable, but like a true leader he warns his
men not to complain on camera about the Bush administration or the ambiguous
war.
Indeed
as the documentary progresses, the tenuous relationship between the soldiers and
the Iraqis of Fallujah becomes increasingly hostile and suspicious. The
nighttime raids, interrogation of women, and capture of any men who may be
insurgents grind on the Iraqis.
 |
The tenuous relationship between the soldiers and the Iraqis of Fallujah becomes increasingly hostile and suspicious
|
One
citizen expresses his frustration eloquently to an American soldier: “America
can go to the moon, can make nuclear rockets, and can make weapons. But it
cannot make the people. We make the people.”
Such
blatant hostility towards the soldiers erodes the army’s sense of duty toward
the Iraqis. They are aware of the complaints being voiced against them in
Arabic, and they constantly resort to vulgar obscenities to release their
frustration. One soldier says, “It’s gonna be our country, it’s gonna be
Iraq. But it’s gonna be like the US’s Iraq.”
Other
soldiers in the unit are reluctantly sympathetic to the Iraqi resentment of
their presence. Pfc. Thomas Turner, 25, admits, “We’re pretty intimidating
when we roll in. … I can’t blame these people for not liking us.”
He
also expresses the underlying concern of most of the 82nd Airborne unit: Just
what is going on in Iraq, and why are they really there? “I want some
clarification. I guess somebody smarter than me knows what’s going on,”
Turner says, adding later, “What exactly are we protecting? I don’t know.”
Occupation:
Dreamland is a case study of the unsettling,
uneasy, wearisome duty of patrolling a city that doesn’t really want
defending. There’s no excitement or glory in this type of warfare, and the
film makes a strong argument for that. It’s a low-intensity, daily struggle
against a murky enemy.
Unfortunately,
the very nature of documenting a unit during a less combative time sometimes
works against the film. It’s a sleeper at some times, plodding along towards
an undramatic ending. But that’s the whole point of the film: It’s hardly a
thoroughly fulfilling life of intense battle against a ruthless enemy. It’s
more of a confusing gray area in which young soldiers and aggrieved Iraqis are
stuck together.
*
Occupation: Dreamland is playing at the 2005 Human Rights Watch International
Film Festival. The 2005-2006 season of the Traveling Festival begins in
September 2005 and runs through May 2006. Please note that the traveling
festival is only available in the US and Canada at this time. For
information about the festival’s schedule in other US cities, visit http://hrw.org/iff/.
**
Dilshad D. Ali’s writing reaches
across the United States to address lifestyle topics pertinent to Muslims and
non-Muslims alike. Ali has covered movie premieres, film festivals, art
exhibitions, concerts, and numerous other cultural stories, including the effect
of September 11 on New York’s cultural landscape for IslamOnline. Ali, a 1997
University of Maryland journalism graduate, resides in New York with her husband
and two children. She can be contacted at
artculture@islamonline.net.
