Review: Body of War

Like any effective polemic, Phil Donahue and Ellen Spiro’s documentary is almost as canny as it is facile in construction.

Body of War
Photo: Film Sales Company

Phil Donahue and Ellen Spiro’s Body of War is a gut-wrenching documentary experience, though like any effective polemic, it is almost as canny as it is facile in construction. Over three years, the filmmakers recorded the life of an American solider who was made into a cripple by George W. Bush’s war in Iraq, capturing how Thomas Young’s injuries affected his family and romance with his new wife, as well as his sense of human worth. This humane project probably bites off more than it’s able to fully chew in 87 minutes, but it chews well enough: In addition to documenting Thomas’s injuries and how their extent was acerbated by military negligence, it catches startling glimpses of people within his family caught in ideological tug of wars that miraculously don’t get in the way of their love for one another. Thomas’s mother is a particularly poignant presence, ushering one son toward war with mixed blessings as she helps another to extract the excess urine from his bladder in a scene that isn’t played for cheap exploitation but as a joyous reminder of the primal connection between mother and child. Only the media’s Axis of Evil—O’Reilly, Limbaugh and Hannity (name-checked by Thomas’s mother during an argument with her conservative husband)—would scoff at the way Thomas, prone to dizziness and no longer able to control his body temperature, must drop his upper body forward in order regain his new center of gravity, or how he brings comfort to mothers who’ve lost sons to the Iraq War, but the filmmakers take aim at more than just our nation’s most visible and risible right-wing representatives. Folded into the story of Thomas’s physical trials and tribulations and activist uprising—from his involvement in Cindy Sheehan’s antiwar crusade to a meeting with the great Robert Byrd of West Virginia—are snippets from the speeches our country’s senators, Democrats and Republicans alike, gave when casting their votes in favor of or against the 2002 Iraq Resolution. The cutting back and forth between Thomas’s life journey and the floor of the Senate gives the film a rhythmic, almost chant-link tenor, and though you could say the filmmakers are aiming low by hanging out to dry those in our legislative branch who gave Bush the power to go to war under false pretense, some of us did know better, so you can’t say that Donahue and Shapiro’s contempt feels undeserved.

Score: 
 Director: Phil Donahue, Ellen Spiro  Screenwriter: Phil Donahue, Ellen Spiro  Distributor: Film Sales Company  Running Time: 87 min  Rating: NR  Year: 2007  Buy: Video, Soundtrack

Ed Gonzalez

Ed Gonzalez is the co-founder of Slant Magazine. A member of the New York Film Critics Circle, his writing has appeared in The Village Voice, The Los Angeles Times, and other publications.

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