Review of Soundtrack To War

Introduction

Music has often been important in war in some form or another. Armies used to march into battle to the sound of pipes and drums, the fore runners of full-scale military bands. Highland bagpipers would scare the living daylights out of enemies with their eerie sounds, often accompanying fearless fighters like the Black Watch into battle. Away from the front, soldiers would relax in the only way they could; alcohol, banter and song. Some songs were popular songs from back home, some were songs about war and some were written by the soldiers themselves about their experiences.

The last two great wars (in a scale sense, rather than how brilliant they were…) brought us songs such as We`ll Meet Again, It`s A Long Way To Tipperary and Pack Up Your Troubles In Your Old Kit Bag. Most were music hall songs as befit the times when music was not as diverse as it`s become since the advent of rock `n roll. These were songs of hope to be sung prior to battle or upon a successful return from a mission where the criteria for success was simply being alive.

Wars have changed, becoming as sophisticated as the armies fighting them, but still the link of soldiers to music remains. Now though, the soldiers take the music into battle with them if they can. CD players can be hooked into the sound systems of tanks and music now accompanies the soldiers as they put their lives on the line. The tastes have changed somewhat as well, with heavy metal and rap music seemingly the most popular accomplices to war.

Australian filmmaker George Gittoes spent some time after the fall of Saddam Hussain to join some of the US troops and talk to them about their favourite music and what it meant to them. The music hall songs of their ancestral brothers in arms is now replaced with the likes of Drowning Pool`s "Let The Bodies Hit The Floor", Mystikal`s "Round Out The Tank" and Outkast`s "Bombs Over Baghdad." Gittoes also found that talking to the soldiers about music allowed them to feel at ease and talk about their experiences, an extraordinary level of trust building between filmmaker and subjects.

Video

Good clear picture filmed up close and personal by Giddoes. The one man operation is clear in some of the shots as he pans away from the interviewee to look at something else and than pans quickly back again. The framing is sometimes off and some shots could probably do with being edited slightly differently. Thing is though, these things actually add to the atmosphere of the film rather than detract.

Audio

Dolby Digital Stereo 2.0 soundtrack that is aptly loud at times. Sadly, no subtitles at all and they are actually required in some places. I`m not a huge fan of some of the raps that take up an inordinate length of this film, but kudos to the performers; a couple are pretty explicit in sexual terms but a lot of them are actually quite moving as they `speak` about their Iraq experiences, especially if you watch the eyes…

Features

Some extended interviews and more rapping/singing from people we`ve already seen in the main feature, but in a more relaxed setting.

Slideshow for a feature called Rampage

Conclusion

"War is heavy metal." So says one of the soldiers featured on this film. Er…no, it`s not. Sure it fits if you have a constant stream of blurred power chords accompanying images of charred bodies and twisted blackened metal, but that only highlights one aspect of war, the glorification. This film actually has much much more to say, but doesn`t. You can draw your own conclusions in the way that the very best documentaries allow you to; Hearts & Minds springs to the fore here, which is again apt when you realise that Iraq is the MTV generation`s Vietnam.

Initial indications upon the start of the film lead you to believe that this film is going to be about slo-mo shots with a soundtrack of Slipknot and Drowning Pool (music I`m not familiar with, thank god…), but it doesn`t stay that way long. There`s a lot of heavy metal inspiring the troops, but there`s unsurprisingly a lot of rap as well. When you consider that the US army is made up mainly from the poor working classes of America looking for an escape, that`s not a surprise. What is pleasing though is that while Giddoes plays to his intended audience (it`s an MTV/VH1-style film after all) most of the time, he looks a little further and brings in something different that his audience may not have considered.

Giddoes spends some of his time interviewing troops who, in the old tradition, have turned songwriter and asks them to sing for the camera. It works well, despite some of the songs being either raw, not very good or both. Still, it`s easy to judge from a distance in the safety of the UK when these people are serving their country and inspired and influenced by what they see around them.

What really takes this film to another level though, is the inspirational decision to seek out native musicians. Against a backdrop of broken buildings, charred vehicle wreckage and corpses, Giddoes finds Iraqi`s with just as much passion for music and slightly different inspiration. First off we meet an Iraqi heavy metal band who oddly blend heavy power chords with syn drums. Despite the latter, the sound to my ears isn`t that different from the bands some of the soldiers are listening to, which is probably the point. This band meets in secret due to non-approval from their peers and all have lost family or friends, one band member describing the brutal killing of a friend and fellow metal fan by a terrorist who simply put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger. This death was due to the fact the victim had a job assisting the occupying forces in order to support his family.

One of the most inspirational groups that Giddoes puts on the screen though is a trio of Iraqi`s that he refers to simply as the Bald Bee Gees. One of their members was a political prisoner Abu Ghraib prison at a time when Saddam was still in control and the world didn`t know the name. He can still remember the smell of burning flesh on his skin as an Iraqi torturer stamped out a cigarette on his face. This story, again told in a matter of fact style, followed a moving rendition of New York Mining Disaster 1941, proving that music can influence anyone anywhere.

What is clear is that war in Iraq is clearly different in theatre than the perception people see on their TV (not that we see that much of it these days). Warfare is now seen 24/7 on our TV screens, when the media are actually interested, something that started with the first Gulf War and surprised me upon returning from that theatre of operations to realise just how much people had seen whereas we relied on dry intelligence briefings for our information on the wider picture. TV reporting makes everything look clean and clinical, even attractive with press conferences and footage of smart bombs. Even imbedded reporters can`t really bring home to the viewers the reality of the experience, whether it`s the bloody dust-ridden chaotic experience of the battle or the sometimes mind-numbing boredom whilst waiting to do your job. Personally I didn`t any see of the former, and thank my lucky stars for that despite knowing that I could have and would have should the need have arisen, and know all too well the latter. People with no military experience, particularly young boys or men, are exposed to glorified images of war all the time though and thus have a misguided view of what it would be like.

The opening montage fits this kind of view and is reminiscent of trailers for action films or more importantly video games, and as the film progresses we start to see the true nature of war as the interviewees describe their feelings and experiences. All have known people die around them, some have killed others. The majority are young men and women, as is always the case with armed forces, and the impact of what happens to them during this period of their lives will live with them and influence them forever. They will all deal with it in different ways. What is clear is that they are striving to do the best they can in the circumstances, despite nearly all of them admitting they just want to go home. The Iraqi`s, on the other hand, are already at home. They just want peace.

It`s not coming any time soon.