The new documentary Body of War, from Phil Donahue and Ellen Spiro, is a powerful indictment of the war in Iraq, the political process that approved it, and how we deal with the wounded American soldiers.
The film, which opens Friday May 16 in Chicago, Minneapolis, Lincoln, and St. Louis, tells the story of Tomas Young, a young man who calls his recruiter on September 13, 2001 after seeing George W. Bush at the site of the Twin Towers. He imagines that he will go to Afghanistan to fight terrorists, but instead he is sent to Iraq where, five days later, travelling in an unarmored truck (sadly, the poor quality of military equipment at the start of the war is ignored in the film), Tomas is shot in the collarbone, and he is paralyzed from the chest down.
Throughout the movie, we see him in stark terms as he speaks out against the war in Iraq and for stem cell research. We watch him struggle to put jeans on, struggle to speak while waves of dizziness, and an unwatchable scene with a catheter that surely ranks as one of the more horrific in film history. Along the way, Tomas’ brother joins the military and goes on two deployments to Iraq, much to the horror of his mother.
If Tomas is the hero of this movie, Congress (and George W. Bush) are the villains, rushing into a war on false pretenses. The scenes with Tomas are interspersed effectively with the 2002 comments of George W. Bush and members of Congress who blithely repeat the absurd lies used to justify war. Donahue and Spiro try to present the 23 Senators who voted against the resolution for war as heroes, especially Robert Byrd. Sometimes they go war over the top, as the movie stirs with annoying uplifting music during the listing of their names. But it’s a powerful reminder of how important elections are. The people in Congress really do matter.
Perhaps Donahue’s wisest decision was to leave himself out of the movie. He could have done a solid Michael Moore-type approach, and even included the story of how he was fired by MSNBC in 2002, partly because (as a memo later revealed) the corporate heads feared having an anti-war voice anywhere on their network. Instead, Donahue lets Tomas be the voice of this story. (Tomas also worked on creating an album titled "Body of War"featuring music by Eddie Vedder created for the movie and other songs donated by the artists.)
At an advance screening of the movie in Chicago on May 14, Phil Donahue spoke about the movie and answered questions from the audience. According to Donahue, "America is not seeing the sacrifices that are being made." He notes: "This is the most sanitized war in my lifetime." And so he urges: "Don’t sanitize the war. Show the pain." Donahue and Spiro show the pain, but this isn’t a painful movie to watch. It’s sad and outrageous and often even funny, but never boring.
One questioner lectured Donahue: "Your film should have had much more about the Iraqi people." But as Donahue put it in his introductory comments, "We knew we couldn't lecture, we couldn't rant, we couldn't be tedious." Americans don’t relate to dead Iraqis. They don’t even relate to lists of 4,000+ dead Americans, as the war in Iraq drops on the list of public concerns as economic troubles rise. But a living casualty of this war, Tomas, provides a literal "body of war" on the screen that people can relate to.
Donahue notes that "mainstream media lost interest in this war." He says he made the movie to "fill this black hole that is left by the corporate media." His own movie doesn’t fit with the corporate model. He doesn’t have a distributor, and depends on Landmark Theaters and some independent theaters to show the movie. He doesn’t have the money to promote the movie in the corporate press, so he’s forced to do some innovative marketing (including singing "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" at today’s Cubs game).
Phil Donahue obviously doesn’t need this movie to be successful in order to improve his bank account or his reputation. But America needs this movie to be successful in order to make sure that the war in Iraq is not ignored by the press and the politicians in this election, and to make sure that the next war is prevented before it ever starts, so that we never need to see the broken bodies of people like Tomas Young.
Crossposted at ObamaPoliticsand JusticeMovies.