Our endless Afghanistan war seen from an odd perspective: Miles Lagoze's COMBAT OBSCURA

Well, times have certainly changed since those early days of our war in Afghanistan, when journalists were "embedded" with the military and did their "reporting" that way. Now, in the new documentary COMBAT OBSCURA, young Marine Corps enlistee Miles Lagoze (enlisting under the name of Jacob Miles Lagoze) served as his unit's official videographer, shooting and editing, according to the press materials for the film, "footage for the Corps’ recruiting purposes and historical initiatives." Upon discharge, Lagoze took the footage that he and his fellow-cameramen shot -- "We filmed what they wanted," he notes at the film's beginning, "and then we kept shooting" -- and assembled a documentary that the Marine Corps (or really any branch of our military) would not, I suspect, want the general public to view.

Perhaps, in order to keep his documentary as truthful and real as possible, Lagoze (shown at left), refuses to tell us anything about anything that is going on here. We simply see it as shot by the cameraperson and occasionally hear the marines involved talking amongst themselves (and once-in-awhile being themselves interviewed for the camera). This means that the viewer is simply tossed into the middle of things without often knowing what the hell those things are all about. Yes, this is confusing, but TrustMovies supposes that, if Lagoze had attempted to "explain " them, he could easily be accused of "slanting" that explanation one way or another. As it is, this is a very make-of-it-what-you-will kind of movie.

And while you may not quite know what to make a of a lot going on here, you probably will be able to figure out that you're seeing actual footage of everything from marines exercising together and getting high to shooting Afghans and exploding things ("Oh, god," we hear someone say, "that's the wrong building!").

We see one marine (below) interacting with a couple of kids whom he insists kept saying to him the word bomb (the interpreter says they're now asking him for a cigarette). Then there's some crappy behavior involving a pair of donkeys, a nasty bit of chicken killing, and finally, yes, planting evidence: a gun in the hand of a fellow recently shot to death (on the accompanying soundtrack: "Oh, man, we killed a shopkeeper!").

For anyone who was or is against our endless middle-eastern wars (hell, even the Russians only wasted a decade on their war in Afghanistan; we've been there going on 18 years now), Combat Obscura will seem like the most depressing yet in a long string of documentaries. For any folk still stupid enough to think we're over there for any reason other than making those who profit from our military-industrial complex even wealthier, I urge you to listen to the eulogy one marine gives for a certain Lance Corporal Watson -- "Almighty god, we stand before you..." blah, blah, blah -- which will simultaneously turn your stomach and blow your mind. To re-coin a phrase, this surely is an embarrassment of wretches.

This 70-minute movie -- which midway along cleverly features a bit of this footage, sanitizingly edited as shown on CNN -- climaxes with a rescue of the wounded, followed by one Marine singing a version of Jingle Bells that would not make Bing Crosby proud. Combat Obscura may be a very difficult thing to watch, but it strikes me as the kind of honest patriotic endeavor that we need a hell of a lot more of. My country, right or wrong? Certainly, but only if you add the rest of that quote: If right, to be kept right; if wrong, to be set right. Currently, the USA, in every way, is about as wrong as I've seen it in my lifetime.

From Oscilloscope Films, the documentary opens this Friday, March 15, in some eleven cities across the country. In Los Angeles, it will play the Laemmle Glendale, in New York City the Village East Cinema, and here in South Florida the Bill Cosford Cinema in Miami and the Lake Worth Playhouse in Lake Worth. Click here and then scroll down to see all currently scheduled cities and venues.

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.