Tell Spring Not To Come This Years (15.)
Directed by Saeed Taji Farrouky and Michael McEvoy. 85 mins
This documentary follows a corps of the Afghan National Army over a year fighting the Taliban in Helmand province, and shows how they cope now that almost all the NATO (although everybody refers to them as American in the film) forces have left. In showing us a locals' view of the chaos there, it shows us an aspect of the world that few in the west would ever have seen. It also expresses a universal truth: whatever the country, whatever the war, a grunt is a grunt is a grunt.
Farrouky and McEvoy's method is to allow the soldiers' stories emerge organically from the material, rather than have the filmmakers impose a narrative onto it. This is honourable stance but their approach to their material is so detached, so non interventional, it is more UN Observer than fly-on-the-wall. So what you get is a loose jumble of scenes where nothing seems to follow on from what happened before, so you never really discover how anything is resolved, or get much below the surface of their existence.
The most extreme example of this comes in a sequence where they are pinned down in a base, surrounded by Taliban, ammo running low and no sign of support coming. Then in the next scene we see them walking away. What happened there? Did the cameras stop working? Are they deliberately refusing to sate audiences' addiction to narrative resolutions? Or is this rejection of joined-up thinking a subtle mirroring of the west's approach to the country?
The unintentional consequence of this is to suggest that maybe the Helmand isn't quite as terrifying as it is presented to be – until the closing credits lists all the members of the battalion that were killed during filming. Embedded in the unit, the filmmakers put their lives on the line to humanise a distant conflict. I'm not putting anything on the line saying by congratulating and thanking them for their efforts but thinking they could've done a more effective job of it.
Directed by Saeed Taji Farrouky and Michael McEvoy. 85 mins
This documentary follows a corps of the Afghan National Army over a year fighting the Taliban in Helmand province, and shows how they cope now that almost all the NATO (although everybody refers to them as American in the film) forces have left. In showing us a locals' view of the chaos there, it shows us an aspect of the world that few in the west would ever have seen. It also expresses a universal truth: whatever the country, whatever the war, a grunt is a grunt is a grunt.
Farrouky and McEvoy's method is to allow the soldiers' stories emerge organically from the material, rather than have the filmmakers impose a narrative onto it. This is honourable stance but their approach to their material is so detached, so non interventional, it is more UN Observer than fly-on-the-wall. So what you get is a loose jumble of scenes where nothing seems to follow on from what happened before, so you never really discover how anything is resolved, or get much below the surface of their existence.
The most extreme example of this comes in a sequence where they are pinned down in a base, surrounded by Taliban, ammo running low and no sign of support coming. Then in the next scene we see them walking away. What happened there? Did the cameras stop working? Are they deliberately refusing to sate audiences' addiction to narrative resolutions? Or is this rejection of joined-up thinking a subtle mirroring of the west's approach to the country?
The unintentional consequence of this is to suggest that maybe the Helmand isn't quite as terrifying as it is presented to be – until the closing credits lists all the members of the battalion that were killed during filming. Embedded in the unit, the filmmakers put their lives on the line to humanise a distant conflict. I'm not putting anything on the line saying by congratulating and thanking them for their efforts but thinking they could've done a more effective job of it.
