Restrepo

I want to focus on one of the scenes in Restrepo which I found very disturbing. It is the scene when one of the soldiers is exchanging fire with the Taliban while at the same time another soldier is looking at the high powered binoculars directing the shooter the position of the Taliban shooter. After the Taliban shooter is dead, the soldier was saying:


“That motherfucker is done. Fuck you bitches. Body parts falling apart. it was him running and then him blasting into pieces. There you go, motherfucker,
shoot at us again.”

“It was him running and blasting into pieces”

https://youtu.be/mT_Auf_v9LQ?t=1h19m58s

In general, Restreppo don’t have much scene of soldiers or Taliban fighters severely wounded or brutally killed.  I was expecting this kind of scenes since this is a war documentary.  It will give the impression to the viewer the agony of the war. Throughout the show, I don’t feel the tense of the war. The soldier seems having their routine as usual and everyone is so supportive and being treated like their own family members.  Also, most of the scenes were shown from the American soldier side.  The viewers do not have any idea what is happening on the other side, how much of their fighters get killed and injured, etc.

But this specific scene gave me a very painful and uncomfortable feeling. I personally think it is inappropriate to celebrate someone’s death like the way they did.  It shows disrespect and an insult to the deceased. But I do understand their tense situation, which forced them to react that way. They had a strong feeling of taking revenge for killing their fellow squad member.  This is one of the impacts of the war in terms of psychology. They were there to serve the army without really knowing the cause of the war. I am not on either side while watching this, but I do think this war is unnecessary. It involves a lot casualties and injuries. They forced a human to kill another human without clearly knows the real situation.  It gave me the idea of war should always be the last result of any conflict.  War forced human not to be humans.


But, I think the directors are trying hard to be as neutral as possible. I don’t think the directors are forcing the viewer to only seeing the American side. The lack of the coverage on the Taliban side is maybe because they can’t access their camp, interviewing the fighters and also safety issues. Instead, to give the Afghani perspective on this war, they covered the captain meeting with the villagers, interviewing the villagers and also provide the coverage of them when the American soldiers ambushing all suspected houses that shield the fighters.  But due to the language barriers, the scene was not really effective. The viewers are left with a lot unanswered question regarding the Afghani perspective of this war