In the Valley of Elah

I don't have a single family member or friend or acquaintance or even friend of a friend or acquaintance who is or has been fighting in Iraq. After seeing this film, I am a whole lot closer to feeling like I do.

Oh, I know about the horrors of war from other films, from books, from television. I am aware that it destroys many of the people who survive it. I know that you have to do things that are way outside what you ever thought you should or could do to another human being. I know it is soul destroying to know that you've done these terrible things and to return to society where you would be seen as a monster if you'd done the same things anywhere but in a war. I heard about it from Vietnam, and I'm hearing about it again from Iraq.

I don't know whether this film made me feel it even more deeply than before, or if it just made me feel it again, afresh. It felt horrible. It was gut wrenching, all the moreso because I know that it is true, and because it's all around me, unheard by me, tearing at families around me at this very moment. The actors force the viewers to confront it, to know. We need to know. We need to refuse to be protected from knowing.

I wish I knew how people who have actually experienced these things react to the film. I don't know if they could bear to watch the film at all.