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Restrepo is war in the raw. Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington crafted an Oscar-nominated film that ignores domestic politics and views the war in Afghanistan from one of the most dangerous and deadly areas, the Korengal Valley. It’s graphic, it’s anxiety-ridden, and it’s shocking, but most strikingly and simply, it’s human. Stripped of political context, the emotional effects of constant danger and instantaneous loss of young lives absorb more deeply. The film presents a view of the war through a window instead of a prism in a depiction that refuses to be padded in rhetoric.
The 90-minute documentary is named after the Korengal Valley outpost where Junger and Hetherington lived and filmed for monthlong periods for over a year — but the name Restrepo has even deeper roots. The outpost borrowed its name from Juan S. Restrepo, a young Pembroke Pines man who lost his life on patrol in the Korengal Valley. The film opens with a home video of Restrepo, a medic in the war, smiling and joking with the other soldiers.
“Tune in next time, where we’re still going to be lovin’ life and getting ready for war,” Restrepo says. Then, in an instant, this light statement crumbles under flying bullets, roadside bombs, and danger so thick, it’s throat-tightening. Sobering reality takes hold. The film’s namesake soldier is fatally shot on patrol only a couple of months after the footage was shot for the initial scene.
Junger, a best-selling author, contributing editor to Vanity Fair and
contributor to ABC News, also wrote The Perfect Storm, A Death in
Belmont and Fire. The Juice caught up with him about making Restrepo and its recent Oscar nomination for feature documentary.
The Juice: Why was it important to avoid politics in Restrepo?
Sebastian Junger: Well, I’m a journalist.
And I don’t work for Fox News… I think journalists, our job is to
present reality in an honest way, and adults can come to responsible
decisions about that reality, but it’s not up to you to tell them how to
think. It’s just not what journalism is.
Why do you generally gravitate to covering stories
of war and suffering?
My first story I ever did was about tugboats in
Boston. In my 20s… I was waiting tables, and I had various jobs. I
felt like I had to kind of jump-start [my career], and there was a war
in Bosnia, and I just went to Bosnia and figured out how to be a
freelance reporter from a war zone, effectively a freelance foreign
correspondent. And I just really fell in love with it… It was just everything I
wanted to be doing, and so I just kept doing it. Foreign reporting
since ’93 has been a constant part of my life.
What do you think Restrepo
shows that news stories might miss?
The topic of war is so
politically
loaded for both conservatives and liberals. I think for both of those
groups, what drops out is the experience of the soldiers who are fighting
the war and the emotional consequences for them… If a war is a bad idea, it’s bad regardless of the
consequences for the troops, and if it’s a good idea, it needs to be
done regardless of the consequences for the troops. So what we wanted to
do is really just show — this is what it means when you say we are a
nation at war; this is what that sentence means for the young men
who fight it… without that being any comment on whether we should be or
shouldn’t be.
In Afghanistan, did you
feel like you were in constant danger, or did you have peace of mind?
No, we were in tremendous danger. We were in the same danger
the soldiers were in. I mean, if you’re in a firefight, it doesn’t
matter if you’re holding a camera or a gun — you’re still getting shot
at.
When your Humvee was blown up [shown in Restrepo],
that looked like an extremely close call. Did that ever make you rethink the
project or change your thoughts toward the war?
No, towards the war,
no. The war is either a good or a bad idea independent of what
happens to me. In terms of the project, I mean, it affected me
emotionally — it affected me psychologically. I don’t think it occurred to me to pull the plug on the
project.
You mentioned that you were injured in Afghanistan. What happened?
I ruptured my Achilles on a
steep hill… carrying a lot of weight, and it just ripped… It was a
partial rupture. So I really kind of limped and crawled around for the
next few weeks. And then the following trip was Operation Rock
Avalanche. Tim took that. Tim broke his leg on that. And so then I took
the following trip. That was when my Humvee got blown up, so Tim took
the next trip. That trip was all right.
How did you and
Tim work together?
I went there first, before I knew Tim. I went there
first in June ’07 to start this project, and I wanted to write a book and
make a documentary. I know how to write books; I never made a
documentary. It wasn’t a realistic idea until I met Tim… We went over together in September ’07.
Did
you find any common threads as to why people become soldiers?
There was a
variety of motivations for joining up. Some of the guys were quite upset
by 9/11 and wanted to serve their country and defend their country. And
some guys joined up because their dad was in Vietnam, and their
grandfather was in WWII, and they were just from families where that’s
what young men did. And quite a few guys, I
think, some of the guys were lost. One guy said, “Oh, I was living with
my mom, and I was partying a lot, and I just wanted some direction in my
life.” And there were guys who very literally were like “I wanted some
excitement. I wanted to know what combat was like. I wanted to test
myself.” And they’re young men; they’re risk-takers, and they define
themselves by doing things that are physically difficult and dangerous.
Your work reveals a
certain soldiers’ mindset that many civilians can’t quite grasp. Why do they like
combat? Why do they go to war?
It’s so
politically incorrect that there would be anything about combat that
would be attractive to young men, but the reality is that after a very
difficult deployment, only one guy in the entire platoon decided to get
out of the Army. Everyone else decided to stay in and do another tour in
Afghanistan… It’s a really
common thing. Men’s reactions — and I keep saying men because it was
all men in that unit — men’s reactions to combat I don’t think have
changed much since the siege of Troy. It’s a really, really ancient
thing. It’s timeless too because they’re there without any internet,
without any kind of connection, and it really is just the same thing
repeated.
That was one of the reasons I wanted to be with a unit like;
that was precisely because I wanted a situation that felt sort of
universal and ancient rather than some sort of big superbase in Iraq where
it’s essentially an American city, except every time you leave… you
might get blown up. That didn’t interest me very much.
What was your
impression of Juan Restrepo through your conversations with the other
soldiers?
They were really fond of him. He was just a really generous
guy — generous in the sense if you didn’t feel well, he’d take your
guard shift. He just took care of people. He was the medic, and
he had a very deep sense of taking care of people — of his men. You
know, he played guitar, he liked to go have a drink and talk to girls —
you know, he was just a fun guy. And he was really loved and respected,
and when he died, everyone was just wiped out.
It would be like the most
popular kid in high school dying in a car accident. He was just one of
those good people that people like. So it was very hard on
them.
How did you feel when the U.S. pulled out of the Korengal Valley [in 2010]?
It was kind of shocking, but I kind of got
it. It wasn’t a piece of terrain that was important anymore, and people
were dying there, including a lot of Afghan citizens. You know, it
seemed — rationally, intellectually, I understood it; emotionally, it
was a little bit of a shock.
[The soldiers] understood it too, I think, intellectually, but I think emotionally
it was very hard for them. But that’s war. There’s no war where
positions that were fought over don’t just get abandoned. That’s just
what war is. That’s why it feels pointless sometimes; that’s why it’s
tragic.
I mean, most people die on patrols that didn’t need to happen.
They die on hilltops that didn’t actually need to be held. This is just,
you know, if I had gotten killed by that IED (the roadside bomb that hit the Humvee), was my life worth the
movie and the book? No, of course not, but that’s not really what’s at
issue. It’s only at issue when someone gets killed, but you don’t know
that that’s going to happen, so you take a gamble. That’s just
what war is, you know; that’s just what journalism is.
What was it like to receive the Oscar nomination?
I was thrilled. This was
all new to me, and I was absolutely thrilled. I think Tim and I did a
good job and made a really good movie, but it also I feel reflects our
subjects. I mean, we were with incredible guys. The platoon, we had an
amazing platoon. Not all platoons, not all companies are the same, and we
were just very lucky to have really extrordinary men around us and in
front of our camera.
What projects do you have coming up next?
We’re going to Afghanistan in April on
assignment to cover the war — continue covering the war. My first trip
there was in 1996. I’ve been going to that country for a very long time.
Where in Afghanistan are you going this time?
You know, I don’t know yet. We’re going
to do a broader piece about the overall war. We won’t be focused in the
same minute way as we were for Restrepo; we’re going to talk about how
the war is going in a very real sense.
Follow The Juice on Twitter: @TheJuiceBPB.
