I went to see The War Tapes, this year’s winner of the Tribeca Film Festival’s Best Documentary, which opened in NYC last night.

Someone from my family actually worked on this film, someone related to my cousin. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you who or what he did. I was in too much of a hurry, trying to get some kids to a Memorial Day parade, to listen closely when he told me about it when I met him last Monday on the cemetery where our family members are buried.

The film’s director, Deborah Scranton was offered the opportunity to join a New Hampshire National Guard unit as an embedded journalist in Iraq but instead chose to offer cameras to members of the unit and have them shoot their year in Iraq themselves.

Ten Guardsmen took her up on the offer. The film focuses on the footage and stories from three of those men:

Sergeant Stephen Pink, 24, who joined the military to help pay for college, left behind a girlfriend Lindsay and seemed somewhat ambivalent but cynical about the war.

Specialist Mike Moriarty, 34, had been a member of the Army, National Guard and Army Reserves. He’s the gung-ho one, the Bush supporter, who speaks of 9/11 and how he felt he had to do something after it happened so he took a bus to NYC and shot some film of the burning remains of the WTC and the photos plastered on poles and such. (I personally don’t understand this impulse that apparently hit so many then. I wanted no part of seeing the site myself.) He chose to reenlist in the NG only if he could be assigned to a unit going into Iraq. Although his interview seemed to imply that he thought this would avenge 9/11, as he spoke of the attack and then wanting to go to Iraq right afterwards, I’m not certain if this is the case. The interview was edited and maybe the Iraq thing had really had nothing to do with his reaction to 9/11. He left behind a family who gave him a hard time about going and leaving his wife, 4 year old son and 1 year old daughter. He talks in the film of how he wanted to make them proud of him.

Sergeant Zack Bazzi, who I think was also 24, was my favorite and a soldier that I think could relate to our General and our General to him. Lebanese born, his family came to the US when he was 8 years old. He joined the Army to travel and found he loved it. He was deployed to Bosnia and then Kosovo and later joined the NH National Guard. He reads The Nation and thinks we’re in Iraq for the oil and that we should pack up and get out of there. He’s willing to walk or bicycle or drive a hybrid car so that we don’t need the oil.

It’s really an astounding film. Sad, funny, breathtaking, heartbreaking. You watch the Company making snow angels in Fort Dix, NJ as they get ready to deploy in a snowstorm in March 2004 and you laugh and tear up at the same time, because they are like little kids, having so much fun and you know they will come back changed men, every one of them.

There are sweet moments: one of the Iraqi policemen asking Bazzi if his mom will see the footage he’s shooting and, when he says yes, speaking a greeting into the camera for his “aunt” in America; another, Bazzi, who speaks Arabic, teaching a young kid how to “give me five”.

There are heartbreakingly sad moments:

Tough macho guy Moriarty, all broken up because his vehicle has accidentally run down a young woman who came out of nowhere to cross in front of them. The other trucks in the convoy, unaware or uncaring that her body is laying there unconscious, roll over her and take her body apart. Mike’s truck stops and they collect the pieces of what was once the woman and remove her from the roadway so she can have some dignity in death. What really gets to him is that he finds crushed cookies on the road. She was carrying cookies. The incident comes back to haunt him after he comes back home too.

Zack refusing to translate when being told to tell an Iraqi father that he can’t take his sick son across the road to the hospital because they’re not supposed to let anyone cross the road.

Shots of little kids on their way to school, just like any other kids, except they’re in the midst of this vast war zone, with bombed out buildings and explosions going off.

All three guys show disdain for private contractors and KBR. Halliburton runs everything, they say, and they are making a killing off the war. They often make snide remarks about Halliburton and Dick Cheney.

At one point, Mike says that although he still supports Bush, when Bush says major combat is over...well, that’s not what he’s seeing. He doesn’t feel too optimistic about the outcome but, at one point after he comes back, says it doesn’t matter why we went there (and he claims it’s not about the oil but, even if it was, that would be a good enough reason) we’re there now and people have to support our efforts to try to make the best of it...or shut up.

Pink talks about how he saw a dog eating the flesh of an Iraqi insurgent that had been killed and that didn’t bother him. He was happy to see these insurgents bloody, ripped apart and being eaten by animals.....and you can’t help but feel for him, who probably would never have had a reaction like that without going through all he’d been through.

They are there through the ‘04 elections and, at one point, Zack says, “"Bush is getting elected for the next four years.....so I guess Operation Iranian Freedom should be next." He also says that probably at most 5 guys in his company didn’t vote for Bush and, if they didn’t vote for Bush, they were quiet about it. Another guy in the truck with Zack says he doesn’t know why but he just feels better with Bush in charge. Arghhhh! I want to scream at the screen....but I stay quiet. Still, what is wrong with these guys? Can’t they see the damage that Bush is doing to them and so many like them?!?!?

They all make it home, safely and in one piece physically, but maybe not so well emotionally.

Mike has physical problems, with his hands and his back, that he’s getting therapy for. He says you couldn’t pay him enough to go back, although he’s glad he went and did his part. It’s someone else’s turn now.

Steve’s a changed man, his girlfriend says. He doesn’t want to talk to anyone about what he’s seen and gone through but she knows he’s hurting. He’s diagnosed with asthma, a few other things....and PTSD, which he chooses not to get treatment for.

Zack’s mother is so happy to see him she wants to hug him for a year and a half. When he says he wants to go see Jim (who I suppose is his dad, divorced from his mom), she asks Zack to call him to come over and visit. She doesn’t want to let Zack out of her sight. He says he loves being a soldier. The only thing bad about being a soldier, he says, is that you don’t get to pick your wars. He reenlists.

When the film was over, there was a hush in the theater. People sat quietly in the dark even after the credits finished, only moving to leave the theater silently when the lights came up. When l walked outside it was raining heavily. Somehow it felt right, as if it should be dark and rainy.

It really is an incredible film, one that you all should go see if it plays in your area. The faces and the images of those young men are close with me today. They are like a reminder of one of the reasons why I want so much for General Clark to be elected commander-in-chief in ‘08. These guys deserve someone who will carefully pick their wars.

Learn more about the film, the filmmakers, and the soldiers here: www.thewartapes.com .