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Occupation: Dreamland is a case study of the unsettling, uneasy, wearisome duty of patrolling a city that doesn’t really want defending |
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.
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| 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.
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