Ryan McNeil
Trying to encapsulate war documentaries continues to challenge me…after all, there’s just so many ways one can write “war is hell”. What I will say is that I have to commend filmmakers who are taker audiences deeper and deeper behind the lines. They are showing us the cold hard math involved with soldiers keeping the rest of us safe.
“The math” as it were, seldom gets colder or harder than it does in ARMADILLO.
ARMADILLO is the story of a unit of Danish soldiers deployed to Forward Operating Base Armadillo. The position is in Afghanistan’s Helmand province – tremendously close to Taliban territory. The base is manned by more than 250 Danish and British soldiers, who steadily find themselves engaged with the enemy.
While at first the young men find themselves antsy for some action – and thus kill time calling home, playing video games, and watching porn – they soon get what they came for. The firefights are close and intense, and just in case we didn’t believe that, they take us along to join the fight.
As ARMADILLO played out, one has to marvel at how far we’ve come with being able to experience the truth of war. International forces have been entrenched in Afghanistan for ten years now, so you’d think the concept of embedded journalism would be old hat by now. It isn’t – not by a longshot. With ARMADILLO we are watching engagements first-hand, getting that lump in our throat as events happen rather than reacting to the people involved recount them. Part of what makes ARMADILLO stand out is the absence of talking heads – and we don’t miss them for a moment.
We don’t need interviews to add context – it’s all there on the screen. We tag along on these patrols as if we were watching scenes in PLATOON or THE HURT LOCKER. But we’re not – we’re watching actual events. We’re watching actual young men get injured and seeing their true reactions to returning fire and killing for the cause. It’s enlightening and disturbing all at once. It doesn’t disturb in an exploitive sort of way, more in the sense that we are somewhere that we aren’t supposed to be.
If one wanted to look into the events that happened during these engagements, some of the info would likely be classified. So how am I, a moviegoing patron, allowed to drop down six bucks Canadian and get all the gruesome details in a cinema? It’s one thing to watch war films based on events that actually happened and have to measure that effect when considering the film’s legacy…it’s a whole other experience watching the actual events.
There’s also the unit themselves – all of them kids in the grand scheme of things. If we’re left with any question about how young they are, seeing the scraggly facial hair that they try to grow through deployment remind us of the little’uns that they are. They’re full of bravado, even in moments where they seem unsure. In one scene we watch them killing time by playing a “call of Duty” sort of video game on a laptop, and the fact they love such things is a huge help since it’s possible that it gives them the detachment neccessary to do what they have to do.
If there’s ever a question about the mettle of these young men and what Afghanistan did to them, it is summed up in the film’s final moments. In some ways I was surprised to learn what I learned, but after watching their experience at FOB Armadillo, I really shouldn’t be. War affects everybody differently, and being a soldier is about more than just being physically fit and quick-witted. Having what it takes doesn’t just affect your ability to do the job, but it tempers your likelihood to keep doing the job. As evidence we watch a conversation between two of the men discussing the possibility of another tour in Afghanistan.
When faced with the notion of a second tour, the soldier’s body language says one thing – what he actually does runs completely counter to that.
Ten years in, I continue to be shaken and shocked by what is happening in Afghanistan, and if I ever needed to test that position, ARMADILLO is the perfect pop quiz. The running line is that soldiers tend not to talk about what they experienced on the battefield…and after seeing something like ARMADILLO we here on the homefront instantly understand why.