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Review by Vittorio Carli 3.5 Stars Robert Byrd, Brad Freeman, Cathy Smith Directed by Ellen Spiro and Phil Donahue Body of War is a searing documentary that is often agonizing to watch. It almost matches the high quality of last year's No End in Sight, which was also about the Iraq War. The film was co-produced by former talk show host Phil Donahue, who took some heat for actually allowing anti-war voices to criticize the Iraq War on his show. The program was allegedly the highest rated show on MSNBC when it was abruptly cancelled. Body of War is one of the most universally acclaimed documentaries of the year. When it played at the Toronto Film Festival, it supposedly received one of the longest standing ovations in the festival's history. The film focuses on Tomas Young, a Kansas City twenty-something man who enlisted in the army. To say that things didn't work out the way he wanted would be a gross understatement. After he was in Iraq for a week, he was shot, and as a result he was paralyzed from the waist down. He has to take dozens of medications daily, and his marriage suffers because of the psychological wounds he attained in the war. (To see a revealing interview with Young, go to http://winnipeg.indymedia.org/item.php?13770S). His struggles to get health care and retain some dignity are juxtaposed against clips of callous politicians who supported a war under false pretenses. With a few exceptions (such as Senator Byrd), they apparently fail to take the human costs fully into account, and the clips depicting Bush joking about weapons of mass destruction imply a contempt for human life. The moody music mirrors the film's melancholy aura of desperation. Eddie Vedder, the lead singer of Pearl Jam provided some downbeat, and thematically appropriate songs written for the film, and there are also some Peter, Paul and Mary songs on the soundtrack. Body of War is an unflinching film about an unpleasant subject. It has crude cinematography, but it succeeds in calling attention to the sacrifices made by a young soldier who is often dehumanized by the health care bureaucracy that is supposed to serve him. It also manages to bring the war down to a very human level.
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