THE GROUND TRUTH: A film review

In the opening scenes of Patricia Foulkrod's powerful documentary about our questionable military venture in Iraq and its effect on the psyches of the soldiers who fight in it, we’re introduced to a number of young soldiers who speak candidly and powerfully about the motivations that led them to join the military. As their stories unfold, we hear their surprised reactions to boot camp and combat training as they were taught to dehumanize their enemy, to “kill hadjis and ragheads.” Each soldier describes in tight, careful detail their transformation from idealistic civilian to highly-trained killing machine. One soldier states quite bluntly and without sentiment how he watched his own resistance to killing grow weaker and finally fade away as the indoctrination took place. Even more chilling is his later description of looking forward to taking his first human life. “I’d been trained for it,” he said, “and I wanted to do it.”

For most of the soldiers in this movie, their turning points and epiphanies arrive in the shocking moments when their worldview is shattered, when the solid black line between right and wrong suddenly turns to muddy, indistinct gray. In nearly every story, we hear of their complicity in the deaths of innocent men, women and children, people who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. One soldier describes having an old woman in the sights of his rifle and being forced to make a split-second decision as she approached an armored US military vehicle. After firing two rounds himself, he watched in horror as the occupants of the armored vehicle opened fire as well, tearing her to pieces. As she fell to the ground, the soldier saw the white flag in her hand. He tells us that he threw his gun to the ground and broke down into tears. As another soldier notes, "It's one thing to replace your worldview with a new one, but another thing entirely to have your worldview shattered and have nothing to replace it with."

What I found so amazing about this movie was the lack of obvious editorializing. It’s a spare, lean movie without obtrusive direction. The soldiers simply tell their powerful stories to the camera. There are virtually no distractions or breaks save for a few brief “intermissions” that feature photo montages overlaid with music, and then it’s right back to the soldiers. I’ve read other reviews that complain about the one-sidedness of the film, but what documentary isn’t? That’s what documentaries do... they present a biased (yet hopefully intelligent) point of view. They’re made with bias and the hope that viewers come to embrace, or at least take into account, the point of view presented by the film.

Any good war documentary is made with a clear agenda, and this film’s purpose is to show the madness of a war that lacks a clear objective, a notion that seems to have filtered down to the soldiers as well. One soldiers states that most of the soldiers he speaks with have no clear idea of the war’s stated mission. “Something to do with 9/11” is a common response. Without a clear stated goal, the soldiers adopt the only one that makes any sense to them... kill or be killed. Kill so that you can eventually go home to the ones you love. Kill because if you don’t, you’re not a good soldier. It’s little wonder that they return home with little or no idea how to readjust to civilian life.

And yet one of the most powerful things about this film is passion of the soldiers themselves. Even before we hear each soldier’s entire story, we can tell that they aren’t a bunch of whiners. Each was a patriotic young person who stepped forward to do his or her duty. Most went to boot camp with a sense of purpose and pride, and returned home disillusioned with what they learned. In the end, each made a very personal decision how to deal with what they discovered, a decision to either suck it up and put a cap on it, hoping it wouldn’t blow, or confront it and be willing to speak the truth, no matter the consequences. The Ground Truth is the story of soldiers coming to terms with the reality of a misguided war, and dealing with their discovery with grace and courage.