I'll admit it. To paraphrase Pete Townshend,
I've known no war. In that respect I'm like most Americans
my age. I grew up in a time of peace, when wars were distant
events that had no direct impact on my life. But more than
that - even now, when this nation is involved in a continuing
conflict in Iraq, I still know  no war. That's because I, like
every civilian, can never fully comprehend the experience
of wartime. How can anyone who has never been trained to kill,
has never faced the institutionalized struggle for life and
death, ever really understand it?
Perhaps
the most tragic thing about war isn't the loss of lives, but
the lives that are forever changed by it. The men and women
who engage in battle have seen and done things that we can
never fully grasp. They return home to a population that may
honor them, may revile them, may be indifferent to them –
and a population that can't hope to genuinely understand them. They come home strangers to their own homeland. How
can these people hope to come to grips with that fact? How
does a person who was trained to be an efficient and effective
killing machine return to a society in which simply verbally
confronting someone can result in jail time? What can it feel
like to be shooting the enemy one day and the very next find
oneself discharged, making breakfast for the kids, trying
to fit into a household where the primary concern is making
the next month's mortgage payment?
There aren't any simple answers to those questions. Every
individual has to deal with them in his or her own unique
way and for many that means simply talking about the experience.
Talking, even when it's to people who have no common ground
with the current or former soldier, can give that person an
avenue toward healing and can help those of us who know no
war to get at least a little understanding of who these people
have become and what the experience meant to them. They talk,
we listen and that's what Voices in Wartime is all
about.
Voices
in Wartime is a 74-minute documentary that attempts to
get its arms around the subject of war by letting those who
have experienced it speak about it in the most honest, intimate
and forthright way possible. Many of the speakers are poets;
others are journalists, historians and military experts. Participants
include Vietnam and Iraq war veterans, civilians from war
torn  Baghdad, peace activists and others who have been touched
by war. The documentary also features dramatic readings from
poets and writers throughout history including Homer, Wilfred
Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes,
and Walt Whitman.
In a way, Voices in Wartime is an antidote to the pre-packaged
images of national conflict that are served to us through
the media. Television and movies, even newspapers and magazines,
tend to sanitize war by offering a stylized and detached viewpoint.
Hollywood movies externalize war. But unlike film, poetry
is a uniquely personal form that internalizes war. As we watch
these men and women recite their writing and talk frankly
about their experiences we get a little closer to what it
must have been like for them. We get a glimpse inside the
heads of people who have had experiences that are far outside
our everyday reality.
 Though
the overall effect is a strongly anti-war message, it is to
the credit of the filmmakers that Voices in Wartime is presented without a political agenda. It's not an anti-war
tract or a leftist manifesto. Rather, it's a heartfelt and
honest collection of words and images that build up a picture
of war that is unique and moving. No one in the film says,
"War is bad". They don't have to. The simple act of expressing
the unvarnished experience is enough to get the point across.
The result is often harrowing, always affecting, and simply
unforgettable.
I could go on about the film, but my hyperbolic pontifications
won't enhance the message. Perhaps it would be better to let
some of the poets speak for themselves. Here are two of my
favorite pieces from Voices in Wartime:
Break a Leg by Chris Abani
His foot, torn off at the ankle,
Half wrapped in corrugated iron
Held the promise of a gift
Jesus smiled sadly from the
Photo taped to his gun's stock.
Blood, like the rain, soaked everything.
The medic, impotent,
Suspicious, like God, lied.
Food for Thought, 3:00AM
by David Connolly
They moved in unison
like dancers in a ballet,
the spider, twenty inches from my rifle,
the VC, twenty feet farther out, in line,
each slowly sliding a leg forward.
I let the man take one more step
so as not to kill the bug.
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The Voices in Wartime DVD is part of a larger effort
to raise public awareness about the experience of war. The
extensive Web site at Voices
In Wartime.org offers additional resources, including
comprehensive study guides, information on the filmmakers,
a collection of the poems featured in the documentary in PDF
and MP3 format, information on teacher workshops and more.
 Image
is everything
Presented in full frame aspect ratio, Voices in Wartime shows excellent image quality. The contemporary images are
shot on high quality digital video that looks exceptionally
crisp and clear. The colors are fully saturated and accurate.
Historic footage and still images look wonderful and fit right
in with the rest of the film. I wasn't able to detect any
compression artifacts or bothersome sharpening and edge enhancements.
One of the strengths of the documentary is its juxtaposition
of some of the most shocking and graphic images of war with
some of the most inspired and beautiful words ever written
on the topic.
The Sound of Music
Like the video, the audio quality is top notch. Obviously, Voices in Wartime isn't a summer blockbuster, so it's
not going to give your home theater a workout. But what the
audio track does it does well. The dialogue is clean and easy
to understand, never overpowered by the tasteful, beautiful
and contemplative score.
Extra! Extra!
Cinema Libre has included a few nice ancillary features on
the disc. The primary extra is a roughly 20-minute addendum
to the documentary called Beyond Wartime, composed
of interviews that focus on the aftermath of war. Shelia Sebron
talks eloquently about living with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder,
John Henry Parker talks about his struggle to help his son
re-adjust to civilian life after serving a tour in Iraq, and
Doctor Enas Mohamed recounts living through the Iraq invasion
as a civilian in Baghdad. Beyond Wartime is an appropriate
and moving colophon to the main documentary.
 Also
included on the disc are two versions of the theatrical trailer
and some text screens that give details on available printed
materials from the Voices in Wartime Education Project.
Closing Argument
Like it or not, America is a nation gripped by war. Sadly,
many Americans either don't realistically recognize that fact
or are gripped by rhetorical sloganeering that abstracts and
obscures the very intimate and human experience of armed conflict. The Voices in Wartime DVD and the Voices in Wartime
Education Project seeks to help people understand what
our men in uniform are living through by creating a forum
for soldiers, journalists and military experts to speak directly
to us in their own powerful words. At such a critical point
in our national history this DVD should be required viewing
for every American, no matter what their political affiliation.
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