Battle for Haditha (Nick Broomfield, 2007)

[MichaelB]

...is on Britain's Channel 4 on Monday at 9pm, after its brief cinema release.

I don't think "pleasantly surprised" is the right phrase in this context, but it's a definite advance on Ghosts, which in turn was a welcome reinvention of Broomfield's once innovative but now passé faux-naïf filmmaker persona. For starters, he stays behind the camera for both films.

I thought Ghosts was pretty good as well, though it annoyed me right at the end when a needlessly politicised title popped up saying "To date, the British government have paid no compensation [to the families of the drowned Morecambe cockle-pickers]" - to which my immediate response was "Why the hell should they? They were illegal immigrants!".

There's nothing as simplistic as that in Battle for Haditha - in fact, Broomfield goes out of his way to ensure that everyone gets their point of view across, whether it's the clearly traumatised US marines, the ex-Iraqi Army officer who plants the Haditha bomb in the deeply mistaken belief that only his enemies will suffer, and the ordinary families who just happen to live in the area and who get caught in the crossfire.

And Broomfield refuses to take sides - or rather, he makes it clear that both the faceless US military commanders, ordering killings from a safe distance, and the non-Iraqi jihadists (in cahoots with a deeply sinister local imam who's clearly thrilled at the propaganda value of the carnage) are equally contemptible, and it's the people on the ground - marines and civilians alike - who are the real victims. Wherever you stand on the Iraq war, it's an unexpectedly powerful, sobering piece of work.

[colinr0380]

It is difficult to figure out my reaction to this film so soon after watching it - I'm still wishing death on the soldiers shooting and grenadeing people with impunity, with no later holding of orphaned children's hands mitigating what occurs (though it does suggest how terrible it must be to be so dehumanised and then have the horror of slowly understanding the pain your actions have caused making a retreat into numbness the only option for continuing with your life). It does effectively show the paranoia of the soldiers interacting and hyping each other up within their fortifications before going on patrol, not having any contact with any of the civilians in the area, creating an insular bubble of fear and lack of empathy as everyone is a potential enemy therefore less than human and able to be killed without a thought. There even seemed to be a question over whether it was obvious that the soldiers knew some people were not involved and killed them out of pure anger just because they had the opportunity.

There did seem to be some interesting parallels to Ghosts - people being powerless in the face of great upheavals, having to become economic migrants or knowing full well of the bomb in the street outside but staying in their homes rather than fleeing for their lives; the way people are used and the greater 'criminals' manage to maintain and even enhance their reputations (the imam describing the soon to be massacred families from their safe vantage point as being martyrs to show western brutality seeming very similar to the British employers using illegal labour because they are cheap and disposable while still feeling able to complain about immigrants - not recognising (or knowing all too well but not voicing) that their role in the process has shown up their hypocrisy); the slow process of officially reporting the bomb, the delays and lack of interest in the welfare of those most in need of help and guidance contributing to their deaths.

Finally the feelings of horror created of knowing the outcome at the beginning of the films are similar - watching as each family is engulfed and their houses gutted mirroring the cockle pickers slowly realising the gravity (and absurdity) of their deadly situation.

EDIT: Reuters report on the current progress of the real case

[tavernier]

Opens at Film Forum May 7.