Hell and Back Again
Sheffield Documentary Film Festival 2012 Commemorative Programme
HELL AND BACK AGAIN D IR E C T E D B Y D A N FU N G D E N N I S
Sheffield Documentary Film Festival 2012 Commemorative Programme
VIOLENT, JARRING AND DARING Hell and Back Again
Hell and Back Again, a superb,
Feeling he no longer belongs at
Mr.
violent,
home - or anywhere - Harris goes
accompanied
through a painful, and at times
Company on a 2009 push in southern
ugly, readjustment.
Afghanistan.
When
Sgt.
Harris,
jarring
documentary
and
about
the
daring
war
in
Afghanistan, lays bare the truth of war - its hellish quality -
with such power, you're not likely
The
to look at this, or any other
harrowing
conflict, the same way again.
battlefield.
Photographer feature one
Marine's
battlefield
home
any
Dennis
feel
photojournalist, from
one
Echo
Marine,
was
shot,
as
Mr. Dennis followed him back to
the
North Carolina and documented his
equally
efforts to recover from a shattered
from
is
Nathan
hip and leg.
Dennis'
he shows the effect of the war
The
chronicles
on Harris' body and soul.Dennis
between
struggle
with
at
as
a
Marines
direct, blunt, and fearless as
Danfung
debut
scenes
Dennis,
film
cuts
Mr.
back
and
Dennis’s
forth
visceral
on
the
has no political ax to grind. His
battlefront footage and Sergeant
stunning,
on-
message
Harris’s
is
straightforward
and
rehabilitation,
to
the-run battle footage. Dennis,
terrifying: There's no reprieve
jolting effect. You can feel just
who was embedded with a Marine
from
clutches.
how jarring and stressful it must
unit in 2009, attaches himself to
Not in Afghanistan. Not in North
be for a soldier to go from the
25-year-old
Carolina.
life-and-death adrenaline rush of
Marine
Sgt.
Nathan
war's
infernal
Harris as he and his men engage
war to the maddeningly slow world
the Taliban. One Marine is killed.
These
Harris
lives,
sustains
a
near-fatal
glimpses
though,
into
can
almost
disrupted have
a
gunshot wound that shatters his
prepackaged,
sanitized
hip and leg.
feel, no matter how graphic. The
overall point is the resilience
Switching back and forth between
of those involved. But “Hell and
the
Back
lethal
action
and
its
Again,”
a
documentary
by
aftermath, the film follows Harris
Danfung Dennis that zeros in on
as he returns to his small-town
one sergeant in Afghanistan, is
life in North Carolina with his
more unvarnished and ambiguous,
wife, Ashley, and their two dogs.
which makes it more disturbing.
of
rehabilitation
inactivity.
and
forced
Hell and Back Again
Sheffield Documentary Film Festival 2012 Commemorative Programme
Unlike earlier generations of injured veterans, American soldiers who have been wounded in Iraq or Afghanistan have received quite a bit of attention. In print and on television the accounts of their attempts to recover from lost limbs and head trauma have been told andretold,accompaniedbyimagesthat werestartlingatfirstbutarelesssonow. Even “Dolphin Tale,” a film aimed at young children, has a subplot involving wartime injuries. These glimpses into disrupted lives, though, can have a prepackaged, almost sanitized feel, no matter how graphic. The overall point is the resilience of those involved. But “Hell and Back Again,” a documentary by Danfung Dennis that zeros in on one sergeant in Afghanistan, is more unvarnished and ambiguous, which makes it more disturbing.
Hell and Back Again
Sheffield Documentary Film Festival 2012 Commemorative Programme
Sheffield Documentary Film Festival 2012 Commemorative Programme
Hell and Back Again
Whatever has crossed Harris’s mind just then doesn’t stop him from purchasing the game. The “flashback" cuts to a scene from “Call of Duty 4," which Harris plays at home. It must seem like nothing compared to the real thing. Or maybe the combat is all he knows, and the virtual shooting is a kind of psychic salve. (Indeed, when we see him in bed with Ashley, he’s instructing her in how to shoot a pistol.) While Ashley places an order at a fast-food drive-through, Harris dozes off up front, and we’re back at another war scene. But that one is briefer. It’s an actual flash. Less than a minute later, we’re back in the car. Harris is slumped over in the passenger seat and the camera is behind the wheel, literally and perhaps otherwise (we don’t actually know who’s driven to this burger joint). Still, Dennis doesn’t abuse his license. The movie doesn’t purport to know exactly what thoughts are clouding Harris’s head. But what you sense in the device is that these flashbacks are mutual. Harris doesn’t appear in all of them, for one thing. They’re scenes of Marines stalking Taliban; negotiating with the aggravated, stressed out Afghans the American military has displaced; hauling the corpse of a severely maimed comrade onto a stretcher. Dennis, a photographer who shot the film and constructed the eerie sound design, might be flashing back, too. That strategy lends immediacy to the proceedings but fosters false identification. We’re allowed to trail these men and lie beside them as they fire at unseen enemies, and we believe we’re with them, that in some small way we can understand what they’re doing.
"This movie makes a tactical adjustment. Dennis’s camera seems
as
if
levitates,
it’s
arrived
swivels,
and
from
another
buoy-bobs
as
planet.
if
it
It
were
floats, watching
firefights and downed men and frantic, purposeful marching through the eyes of a computer-generated orb in a sciencefiction adventure." American troops engage Afghan militants
This is not to say that Dennis is going for detachment, per se. He wants the opposite: to make us feel anew the dread and craziness we’ve experienced, as moviegoers, over and over before. He wants it to feel foreign to us because it is. He wants us to know what Harris aches to get back to. So that visual strategy works almost even better in North Carolina. Harris is home. But he’s on another planet.
Hell and Back Again
Sheffield Documentary Film Festival 2012 Commemorative Programme
Hell and Back Again
Sheffield Documentary Film Festival 2012 Commemorative Programme
“there’s no reprieve from war’s infernal clutches. not in afghanistan. not in north carolina.”
Hell and Back Again
With some documentaries, you can feel the filmmakers hit a wall. They have a great subject - the war in Afghanistan, say - and they have a point to make or an angle to pursue. But, despite the proliferation of talking heads, they can’t find a style or a voice. The heads talk, but the movie doesn’t speak. Danfung Dennis doesn’t appear to have a limit. It’s as if he’s seen (or knows we’ve seen) some of these movies and understands that the
Sheffield Documentary Film Festival 2012 Commemorative Programme
flavorlessness of even the most well-meant, clearly articulated filmmaking can leave you unroused, undisturbed, indifferent to what you’re being told and shown. Conversely, his film is an ingenious artistic disturbance. It’s a combat film and a cominghome movie, chiefly about a Marine named Nathan Harris, who’s critically wounded in Afghanistan and struggling to re-adjust to both the brutal drabness of civilian life in North Carolina and the depressing state of his lower body.
Hell and Back Again
Sheffield Documentary Film Festival 2012 Commemorative Programme
“the artistry of a painting and the impact of a sucker punch.”
Hell and Back Again
Sheffield Documentary Film Festival 2012 Commemorative Programme
Hell and Back Again
Sheffield Documentary Film Festival 2012 Commemorative Programme
“There are times, she says, when it’s like he’s become a different man.”