Responsibility, PTSD and culture clash fuel Benjamin Gilmour's unusual Aussie film, JIRGA

Australia’s pick for Best Foreign Language Film for the 2019 Oscars and winner of the Best Independent Film Award from AACTA, the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts, JIRGA, the new film by Benjamin Gilmour (shown below), despite its production history being about as fraught as they come, turns out to be -- if you can forgive one whopping bit of coincidence and unbelievability -- a remarkably unusual, thoughtful and finally very moving experience.

Why so fraught? Here's what the writer/director tells us in the press notes for his film:

“I was approached by a Pakistani producer who had found a Pashtun financier ready to put up $100K for the production of my script in Pakistan. My film was set in Afghanistan, but to benefit from the finance we'd need to shoot in Pakistan's Khyber Paktunkwha province. I approached Sam Smith, a talented actor from Sydney (not the singer) who was up for the adventure. We flew to Islamabad, only to discover the financier did not have permission to shoot from the ISI -- the Pakistan secret service -- who actively blocked the production after reading the script, considering it too politically sensitive. The Pashtun financier pulled his money out. Sam Smith and I were stranded in Pakistan with no team and no money and were now being tailed and harassed by the secret service. We could have flown back home then, but instead decided to shift the whole shoot to Afghanistan, risking our lives and investing some crowd funding and personal savings to make it…”

The result certainly proves worth everyone's time and finances (including ours, at least in terms of 78 minutes spent, together with the price of a movie ticket). This tale tells of an ex-soldier who committed an act somewhere between accident and war crime, and who has been hugely troubled by it ever since. He has determined to return to Afghanistan and the village/community where the event took place and offer himself up to "justice."

Fortunately the actor chosen to essay the role of ex-soldier, the generically-monikered Sam Smith (shown above and below), makes a most attractive and believe protagonist. Graced with handsome face and lean, lithe body, Smith is onscreen almost constantly, and he slowly pulls us in to his odd, difficult and sad quest. There are varied ways soldiers and ex-soldiers handle their individual Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder -- from group therapy or out-of-control anger to murder and suicide.

Smith's character Mike Wheeler's choice is certainly one of the more unusual ones, but the filmmaker and actor have collaborated well and made this choice strange but believable, thanks to a generally good script that shows both the difficulty of communication via language and the help that money (taped to our protagonist's body, above) can provide.

Along his journey, Mike encounters a kind and caring taxi driver (Sher Alam Miskeen Ustad, above), who bonds with our hero via music and a strange boat trip on a pink swan raft, before the two must separate suddenly when the Taliban appears.

This "escape" scene, below,  proves the movie's low point, as it is more than a tad unbelievable, as is the wandering in the desert that follows before Mike has somehow been found/rescued by a band of what seemed to me Taliban soldiers but perhaps were just a group of unattached "freedom fighters."

The leader of this group eventually bonds with Mike (thanks to the one fellow in the group who speaks enough English to communicate).

One wonders why the filmmaker did not dispense with the foolish "escape" and simply have the armed men at the road block be the group who captures Mike, keeping him in its underground lair until it eventually understands his mission and helps guide him toward it.

That said, the remainder of the film slowly coalesces into a very believable and moving conclusion involving that titular Jirga (below), as well as the family member (at bottom) of the dead Afghan man who unknowingly set Mike on his crazy but somehow understandable mission.

Though most of the supporting cast are untutored amateurs, they play their various roles well enough to pull us in, and Mr. Smith, via face and subtle acting skill, does the heavy lifting gracefully and well. Gilmour's film highlights the kind of trauma that has bedeviled so many of the soldiers who fought in the seemingly unending and certainly pointless middle-eastern wars -- both Americans and, in this case, Australians who fought in Operation Slipper.

From Lightyear Entertainment, in English and Pashto (with English subtitles), Jirga opens this Friday, July 26, in New York City at the Village East Cinema, and in the Los Angeles area on August 2, at Laemmle's Music Hall 3. More playdates should be coming soon. Click here to view the most current schedule of cities and theaters.

SNOW MONKEY proves one of the best from Australian Middle-Easterner, George Gittoes

To my knowledge there is nobody currently doing anything like what fine artist and documentarian-cum-narrative filmmaker, George Gittoes (shown at left and elsewhere below), is up to, rescuing/educating one by one citizens of lands like Pakistan and Afghanistan, teaching and helping them to understand, appreciate and even make and star in their own movies as a pathway toward bridging certain gaps -- west and east, class and religion and who knows, maybe even a few others in the process.

If you were lucky enough to see his The Miscreants of Taliwood, which gave us the kind of education into provincial Pakistan that few had seen up to then (2009), or others of his films since, you'll know you're in for an original combination of documentary about filmmaking in the middle east in which middle easterners take part in the film, learning the art and craft of the process of movie-making, even as the audience learns about them and their society.

Gittoes' work is like nothing I've seen before or since, and I believe it reaches and teaches both east and west in ways that are strange, yes, but remarkable, too. His latest film, SNOW MONKEY, is a case in point. Using a combina-tion of documen-tary and narra-tive techniques so that, finally, the viewer can't really differentiate (or maybe even care to), Gittoes documents groups of youth "gangs" in present-day Jalalabad.

His "star" is a terrifying young kid, self-christened as "Steel," the actions of whom will have you wanting to deck him, and permanently, within the first few minutes of the film. But he's the star, as well as the kind of kid that Gittoes apparently most wants to reach. That is exactly what the filmmaker does, slowly and in fits and starts, as the movie proceeds. We see how, from an early age, Steel has seen and fully digested the ways in which strength and power count for all, and any glimmer of kindness is seen as weakness. As has happened in other of his films, Gittoes reaches the boy by giving him the opportunity to act in a film.

As Steel and his gang members, as well as members of other gangs, come into focus, we learn of their lives, hopes and losses. Steel acquires a "girlfriend" (above, center) along the way, even as another boy loses his father, a police inspector, to a sudden explosion. We meet a high-level member of the Taliban who, surprisingly, allows Gittoes and his significant other, Hellen, to continue teaching and performing in the town. (Even within the Taliban, it seems, there are better and worse examples, which, by the conclusion of the movie, we will have witnessed).

Another gang sells ice cream -- which has never looked quite so tasty and wonderful as here (it's like a sudden dish of hope)  -- to support its families, The life that pulsates from this film is extraordinary, and Gittoes' command of fimmaking is such that we experience that life with increasing wonder, surprise, fear and expectation. As in other of his films, Gittoes attracts his "actors" by giving them the opportunity to fight and appear super macho on film. While this might seem to go against the wanted outcome, it also may be the only way to initially coax the would-be performers into action, as the territory here is patriarchal and fundamentalist in the extreme.

After appearing at the Melbourne International Film Festival, Snow Monkey premieres on November 20 at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA).  Click here for more information.

RESTREPO: the Hetherington/Junger American men-at-war documentary opens

In the annals of men-at-war documentaries (U.S.-in-the-middle-east variety), Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger's RESTREPO occupies an interesting place. More artful, though less off-the-cuff, than Gunner Palace or Severe Clear (even with the latter's odd mix of conflicting narrator and director viewpoints), it gives us, in just about 90 minutes, a fairly inclusive picture of men at modern warfare. Here is the getting ready, the going abroad, the combat (with its loss of life), working with the indigenous people (who might very well be the enemy), horsing around and challenging each other at wrestling, and a lot of talking -- about both what is happening at the urgent moment and in retrospect, with time having healed (or further opened) old wounds.  

This makes for a more complete picture than we generally get, and it goes a long way towards our understanding of the situation from the viewpoint of its U.S. participants (we never see the other side's combatants: it's all just bullets whizzing by).  Our boys shown here, unlike those in some other documentaries, never question why they are where they are or what they are doing.  (Or if they do, we don't see or hear this.)  But then, that's what good soldiers don't do: question. They carry out orders.  This situation allows Restrepo to be about as non-political as possible under the circumstances.  Viewers, in any case, will probably already have their own ideas, fairly well-fixed by now, about the ongoing war in Afghanistan.

Hetherington (above, right) and Junger (above, left) are smart to stick us into the thick of things quite soon.  However, unlike what I had already read about this film -- and so was consequently expecting almost non-stop "action" and fierce, you-are-there fighting -- the movie is leavened with a good deal of quiet talk and remembrance.

Early on, the Captain explains that, "Getting these people (the Afghans) to push out the Taliban, the insurgency, is to get them to basically push out their own family members, so this is going to be the hard part." Uh, yes.  And from what we see over the next hour and a half, he's so right. Later he explains that past mistakes made by former commanders will be expunged: "We're wiping the slate clean!"  Gosh, I wonder how you do that?  Especially when there's no time for the truth-and-reconciliation thing -- not that T&R always works that well, anyway (see Disgrace).

The short wrap-up information that closes the film indicates, without spelling this out in bold type, that nothing this company of men has done has achieved a damn thing, except the loss of life. That's about as political (or not) as the movie gets.  (I did not stay for the Q&A that took place with Mr. Junger after the FSLC's Human Rights Watch Festival screening, but I am told that he seemed to indicate that, while Iraq was certainly a folly, our presence in Afghanistan is good, if only for the fact that the death toll among Afghans is down since we've been there -- a conclusion that has drawn mixed reviews.)

Restrepo, by the way, is the name of the outpost created by the company soldiers at the top of hill where they can fire down or up at the hills above and below them (and can be fired upon from above and below, as well). The outpost is named for a medic whom we see briefly at the film's beginning, as he leaves for his deployment and jokes with his companions.  He is the first person in the company to be killed.

Another soldier, whom one of his comrades calls "the best of all of us," is also killed, as we watch during one of the attacks, and shocking as this is to see, even more so, in its way, are his comrades' responses to the death.  These are not so much the fear or anger we might expect but rather a kind of how-can-this-be-happening surprise, accompanied by such sorrow and pain in their cries that this sweeps away nearly everything else I have seen regarding death-in-combat.

Along the way, you may feel, as did I how difficult it must be for these soldiers to understand what is happening, let alone why.  The need for constant translation of language when speaking with the populace, not to mention an understanding of Afghan culture and religion -- so much is missing for our boys that a tiny detail like petting a local dog takes on incredible meaning as a primal give-and-take that actually works on some level.

After a mini firefight, "Next time you see that dude, take his head off!" notes one solider to another. Trouble is, they didn't "see that dude" in the first place.  They never seem to see their enemy. Nor do we.  During the event that most of the guys feel was their worst experience -- something called Operation Rock Avalanche -- the men go into the home of a dying family where they are simply unable to offer help of any sort.  This pains them -- and us.  And from where do these very odd looking dyed-red beards on the older men of the village come and what do they signify?  We don't learn this either, but we wonder briefly if we've wandered into some re-creation of the Kurosawa movie.

As for the homo-erotic, men-at-war element, there's a scene here that should call to mind a certain Camp Sullivan. Finally, we're just glad, as are the men, to depart Restrepo -- the movie and the outpost. We're left, as are the soldiers, with odd, disturbing memories.  We can shake them off; for the soldiers, you've got to wonder about PTS syndrome.

Restrepo, from National Geographic Entertainment, opens Friday, June 25, in New York City at the Angelika Film Center.  You can find upcoming playdates across much of our very large country here.