Winter Soldier (DVD)
APPROX. 95 MINS. - PROD. YEAR: 1972 - MPA RATING: NR
" “Winter Soldier” defies the maxim that it is better to show than to tell.
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A documentarian has many options at his or her discretion when embarking on a project: shoot in the poetic style of Flaherty, or in the observational style of the Maysles brothers; use voice-over or not, appear on screen or stay behind the camera, and so on. The choices are manifold and difficult. Sometimes, however, the subject matter is so powerful, so explosive, that the most appropriate choice is also the simplest one: just point the camera and shoot.
On January 31, 1971, a group of Vietnam veterans (more than 125 in all) gathered in Detroit for a hearing known as the Winter Soldier Investigation. This was not a trial, but rather a public meeting of sorts, an effort to bring to light some facts about the war that the mainstream media was unwilling to cover. I don´t know what the Winter Soldier attendees expected, but they could not possibly have been prepared for the shocking testimony they would hear over the next three days.
The litany of charges is numbing. A former captain calmly recounts how he witnessed American soldiers throwing Vietnamese prisoners out of helicopters. They competed to see how far they could throw each one. How many prisoners did he see killed this way? "Oh, somewhere from 15 to 50." Another veteran describes his first day in Vietnam: on the transport to his base, a group of Vietnamese children flipped the bird to the soldiers who responded by shooting them to death. The stories only get worse from there.
The testimony is all the more horrifying for the matter-of-fact way in which the soldiers relate it. There is no shouting nor crying, ranting nor raving. One soldier after another calmly relates the facts, providing locations and numbers, with all the emotion of a man filing an insurance claim. This affectless recitation of horrors is mirrored by the film´s no-frills style. The camera is trained on one each veteran in succession with no music (until the closing credits), voice-over (save in the introduction) or identifying titles. Though there are some photographs from Vietnam shown during the film, the soldiers´ testimony comprises virtually all of the footage. "Winter Soldier" defies the maxim that it is better to show than to tell. In this case, the telling is the whole point, and it is more than powerful enough.
Unfortunately, not too many people heard the message. The Winter Soldier Investigation received scant coverage in the press, and the film only played briefly in New York (and once on television) before disappearing almost completely until it resurfaced in a short but potent theatrical run last year. The suppression of "Winter Soldier" suggests that the cowardice and general cluelessness of the mainstream press is anything but a recent development. One of the few times we hear a reporter in the film, the only question on his mind is why the soldier has long hair and a beard. Quick, give that man a nightly show on MSNBC!
The documentary was made by a group of filmmakers identified at the time as the Winterfilm Collective. When the film played at Cannes, it was listed as being directed by "Anonymous." Today we know the names of the filmmakers, of course: Barbara Kopple is the most famous, along with her "Harlan County USA" editor Nancy Baker. The point of creating an "anonymous" film (unlike the paradoxically attention-seeking anonymity of Dogme 95) was to focus attention on the soldiers and their testimony, and to offer the film as a kind of public service. Though the film received only minimal circulation in its day, anyone who saw it remembered it vividly and it has been oft-discussed by film critics ever since.
Today, "Winter Soldier" is both resonant and relevant, for obvious reasons. The crassest observer might claim that the film shows that war atrocities have always ocurred, so Abu Ghraib is no big deal, or just "a fraternity prank" as Rush Limbaugh said (but he just meant it as a joke, har har.) That Abu Ghraib or the recent charge that U.S. soldiers needlessly killed dozens of Iraqi civilians is "nothing new" should make it no less appalling. And the same is true of the charges made in "Winter Soldier." Even thirty-five years and countless cinematic depictions of the horrors of Vietnam don´t dampen the pure shock value of this documentary.
