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.

A soldier's story and a would-be movie are at the core of Erik Nelson's doc, A GRAY STATE

Unless I missed it embedded somewhere in the soundtrack of the new documentary, A GRAY STATE, I heard no mention made of Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder during the film, and yet everything about the later life and untimely death of David Crowley -- the Iraq/ Afghanistan war vet whose body was found, along with those of his wife and four-year-old daughter, shot to death in their Minnesota home (the three are shown below, with their dog, who survived the slaughter) -- fairly screams out PTSD! And the more this movie uncovers about the character and mental state of Mr. Crowley, the crazier he appearing to be becoming.

TrustMovies knew little to nothing about Crowley prior to seeing this film, so he had no preconceived ideas regarding this fellow, who apparently was some sort of hero of the alt-right movement (which I abhor). And while the man seemed happy enough to join the U.S. Armed Forces post 9/11 to fight in Iraq, after being told he could come home once that deployment finished, only to learn he had been redeployed in Afghanistan, this betrayal, as he saw it, simply added to what he already felt during the Iraq deployment regarding the ways in which our government had betrayed its soldiers fighting there, as well as the people we were said to be "democratizing" in the mid-east.

Now, it doesn't take an alt-right believer to find all of the above quite true. But, hell, what western democracy, save perhaps those of some Scandinavian countries, has not by now completely sold out its citizens to the interests of the wealthy, the corporations, Wall Street and the banks? But Crowley, post wartime, decided to become a filmmaker and shoot a movie that would show a USA taken over by a government bent on destroying the lives and the "rights" of its citizens. As directed by Erik Nelson, shown at left, the documentary is certainly interesting enough, as we follow Crowley's would-be "career" and the never-made film, to be titled Gray State, that was the non-existent centerpiece of that career..

From what Mr. Nelson has cobbled together for his documentary -- lots of archival images and footage, interviews with family and friends  (Mr. Crowley's father and Crowley's wife's business-partner and friend are both quite intelligent, appealing and moving in their statements) -- what we can ascertain from all this is that Crowley himself talked a great game and did not in the least live up to all his blather.

From the snippets we're shown of the would-be director's Gray State movie, as well as the cart-before-the-horse trailer he made for it, his movie offers little more than random acts of violence inflicted upon American citizens. Despite Crowley's ability to fill a wall with "signifiers," as above, having to do with the movie and/or maybe America's betrayal (à la the usual CSI investigation), the man seems to have accomplished nothing approaching a real movie.

One can certainly understand why the alt-right, in its blinkered stupidity, has come up with various conspiracy theories regarding the family's death, a couple of which we are briefly shown here. Yet as to the motive for what happened to the family -- by the police investigation, by much of what we are shown in the doc, as well as by even Crowley's own father -- it seems to me that the younger Crowley's inability to produce what he promised his backers and fans (which can also be seen, by the way, as part and parcel of his PSTD behavior) resulted in his taking the easiest, as well as the most awful, way out.

So, yes, this story is about as depressing as it gets, but still I wished for more insight to be provided by this documentary. Instead we seem to glide over the surface of just about everything here. How and where did David and his Muslim wife, Komel, meet and bond? That would be good to know. Showing us more of that much-talked about "trailer" for his film might also have provided Crowley with more credibility. Perhaps the most striking scene of all comes as Crowley's two Hollywood backers listen, astonished, to a recording of what their "wonder boy" really thought about them and the manner in which he felt he had to "con" them.

Along the way we witness the idiocy of so much social media (and that irredeemable asshole Alex Jones), and we hear and view a David Crowley who seems, almost from the get-go, to be a little bit nuts. And then increasingly so. Still, the fellow did get a Gray State movie made, after all. It's just one that offers a very different viewpoint from his own and has been directed by someone else.

From A&E Documentaries and First Run Features, A Gray State opens in theaters this Friday, November 3, in New York City at the Cinema Village, and on Friday, November 24, in Los Angeles at Laemmle's Music Hall 3. Otherwise, wait for it on DVD, streaming and most likely the A&E Network one of these days.

Alice Winocur's DISORDER proves a paranoid thriller with excitement, depth and character

The first thing you may notice about DISORDER, the new film from Alice Winocur (shown below, who gave us the unusual Augustin three years back) is its sound design. As we follow a young soldier with PTSD, we're aware of a kind of pulse, beeps and background noise of all sorts, sometimes quite subtle, other times more forceful. I had to stop the disc once, just to be sure the sounds were not coming from somewhere in my apartment. No, they're in the mind and feelings of our protagonist, Vincent, played by Matthias Schoenaerts (of Bullhead, Rust and Bone, A Little Chaos, Far From the Madding Crowd and The Danish Girl), in what may be the best of his many good performances so far.

You could hardly ask for two more disparate movies - in terms of theme, content and genre than Ms Winocur's Augustine and Disorder (the filmmaker, who also co-wrote the screenplay for Mustang, is shown at right), yet she handles both films with an assured hand that gives us what those themes and genres need -- plus something more. Character would seem to be paramount to this filmmaker, and she provides it beautifully in both movies, while also adhering in her latest to some of the important conventions requires by the thriller genre.

That "character" is shown most prominently and importantly via Vincent (Schoenaerts is shown above and below), whose PTSD appears to have made him unable to continue his military service. He wants to, but things don't look promising. A compatriot gets him a security gig with a group who are protecting the home of a wealthy Lebanese businessman. When that businessman is simultaneously called away on emergency business and after Vincent has shown a bit more than mere competence on the job -- or maybe it's simply due to his friend's influence -- he is asked to stay on until the businessman returns to guard his house, his wife and his son.

The entire set-up here is geared for high stakes security, and therefore paranoia, and Ms Winocur very quietly and cleverly allows us to feel all of this without ever being certain whether what we're experiencing is actual danger or merely professional paranoia. Add to this Vincent's own unsettling symptoms, and we're on very shaky ground. For nearly the first half of the film we're kept on our toes and a bit breathless, wondering and waiting for one of those shoes to drop.

When the moment comes for action, the filmmaker proves to be more than up to the task. This scene is absolutely crackerjack -- thrillingly you-are-there -- and its aftermath (why are the authorities behaving in this odd way?) even more so. And Winocur brings everything to completion in a strangely satisfying manner than manages to bring a kind of closure, even as it honors its quest for character with a marvelous combination of strength, precision -- and doubt.

Despite its genre, the movie really has only four important characters, Vincent, the businessman's wife (a fine job by the always glamorous and usually expert Diane Kruger, above), his young son (a good, unfussy and believable job by Zaïd Errougui-Demonsant, below, left), and Paul Hamy as Vincent's friend, Denis (center, two photos below) who, due to all the paranoia surrounding us, we can't help but wonder just how good of a friend he really is.

The filmmaker captures well that initial distance and class difference between employer and employee, and she allows this distance to properly lengthen or shorten, as things take turns for worse and better. For their part Schoenaerts and Kruger do a fine job of making their relationship count, while keeping it as off-balance as is all else around us.

Finally, as it becomes clear that we can no longer trust police, government and who knows who else, we must reply on character.  It is here that Winocur makes her final and finest stand. Disorder gives us much of what genre fans will demand, and then a little more. I think you will remember it oddly and fondly -- right up until its final moment, which you will discuss and perhaps argue over.

From IFC Films and running a nicely-paced and just long-enough 98 minutes, Disorder opens in New York City this coming Friday, August 12, at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema and IFC Center -- while simultaneously becoming available via VOD. We're told that a nationwide, limited-release rollout will follow.

Mischa Webley's THE KILL HOLE lands in theaters briefly, prior to an April DVDebut

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder has followed soldiers' wartime experiences undoubtedly since history's original war (whatever that was), though it has been called, over the centuries, many other names. While PTSD is simply the latest in a long line of monikers (neurasthenia, shell shock), there can be no surprise that this condition should affect soldiers so drastically, as war brings out the worst in human behavior. The guilt/fear that follows this behavior should be as expected as it is difficult to deal with, and that is the subject of the interesting and worthwhile, though not always successful, new film, THE KILL HOLE, from first-time full-length filmmaker Mischa Webley.

"I fought my fucking ass off for them, and they don't give a shit about me!" an ex-soldier cries early on, and this about sums up the situation of the United States' concern for its veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, just as it was, perhaps to a lesser extent, of those who fought earlier in Vietnam. As screenwriter and director, Mr. Webley (shown at left), I think, understands this situation pretty well and he has communicated it to his two actors who play the leads in his film so that their performances, both quite good, carry us through some of the more difficult dialog and especially the voice-over narration that, from time to time, might sound pretentious if it also did not seem to be coming from such a troubled, off-kilter place.

Of course, these words sounds a little crazy and self-justifying: if the guys who speak and think them were more clear-headed and on top of things, they might by now be teaching philosophy at Yale. Instead they are reliving the past, most of it quite nasty. One of them, Lt. Drake (Chadwick Boseman, above) led a platoon in which the massacre of a family occurred, concluding with the burning alive of a certain "wanted" man on order from "superiors."

An observer of all this (himself unobserved by the murdering platoon) who has come with his own murderous agenda, Sgt. Carter (Tory Kittles) witnessed the killing is now dedicated to killing off those "superiors." He has murdered one of them already, and before he can kill more, Drake is hired/semi-kidnapped by the mercenaries who ordered the original killing (these kinds of mercenaries, after all, are responsible for much of the bloodshed, death and torture in both our current wars) and ordered by them to track Carter to his mountain cabin and kill him.

Before and after this "event" and its follow-up, we sit in with Drake in PTSD meetings led by a very good Billy Zane (above) who tries unsuccessfully to bring Drake out of his shell. The lead mercenaries are played by Peter Greene (below) and Ted Rooney (shown at bottom, center). The major problem with the film is its split personality: the melodrama of the sections involving the all-white mercenaries' against the more serious dialog and bond that form between the two black soldiers.

Race is important here, I believe, for the film (as are our wars) is about the users (the powerful) against the used (the powerless). And while there are plenty of white soldiers who've been used as badly as black ones, historically in this country blacks -- particularly black males -- have been on the bottom. The Kill Hole never pushes its view of racism; given the casting, it does not have to.

Carter's mountain cabin is perched atop a hill, giving him (and us) a view of all the surroundings. The snow-capped mountain (above) that we see from his cabin is a glorious sight and acts as a kind of symbol of something pure, beautiful and out of reach. What we're left with at film's end is a stark, mournful look, not just at the fruits of war but at the horror left in the minds and souls of our veterans. Webley and his cast are to be congratulated for taking us there, even if only fitfully.

The Kill Hole (the title comes from a big black hole on the bulletin board in Carter's cabin), from Alternate Endings Studios and running 92 minutes, arrived yesterday on theater screens in limited release across the country. Here in New York City,  it's playing at the MIST Harlem Cinema. Come April 9, it will be available on DVD.