Battle for Haditha (2007)

Directed by: Nick Broomfield | 93 minutes | drama, war | Actors: Elliot Ruiz, Yasmine Hanani, Andrew McLaren, Matthew Knoll, Thomas Hennessy, Vernon Gaines, Danny Martinez, Joe Chacon, Eric Mehalacopoulos, Jase Willette, Antonio Tostado, Tony Spencer, Nick Shakoour, Alysha Westlake, Oliver Bytrus, Nathan DelaCruz, Nathan De La Cruz, Ali Adill Al-kaanan Desher, Falah Abraheem Flayeh, Duraid A. Ghaieb

There is no shortage of war films, on the contrary. Think ‘Cold Mountain’ and ‘Gone with the Wind’ about the American Civil War. Or ‘Hotel Rwanda’ and Black Hawk Down’. And then we haven’t even mentioned the countless films about the Second World War. These are usually the most gripping war films because this war is closest to people and furthest in memory. In that respect ‘Battle for Haditha’ is a bull’s eye. Because what is fresher in the memory than the war in Iraq? Yet this film shows that we actually know very little about this war and how intense it all went. Apparently it is still too far from us. With this film, that is a thing of the past. Director Nick Broomfield suddenly brings reality eerily close with this film.

The ‘Battle for Haditha’ is a two-day attack on the town of Haditha by the US military. The reason? An American soldier has been killed in a bomb attack and the soldiers think that is enough reason to flatten the entire village and murder entire innocent families. We follow the story from three perspectives. From the soldiers who lose their colleague in a bomb attack and go completely crazy as a result. From two men who planted the bomb and are torn by guilt when they find out what brought all this about. And the final and most poignant perspective is that of an innocent family torn apart by the brutal military, including a love drama involving a pregnant woman. A discussion that this entails is of course who is good here and who is bad here? Are the military bad because they want to avenge the death of their colleague and friend? Are the men who planted the bomb evil? Everyone will agree on one thing, the men in the US military are no sweethearts. And when they receive an award for their heroism, it evokes slight nausea. But what about the men who put the bomb there? Are they bad? Or did they have a reason for doing this?

Nick Broomfield is known for his documentaries such as ‘Aileen, Life and Death of a Serial Killer’ and ‘Trackin Down Maggie: The Unofficial Biography of Margaret Thatcher’. With ‘Ghosts’ he already made a foray into the kind of genre that is a cross between a documentary and a feature film. So is ‘Battle for Haditha’. Especially the beginning seems like a documentary. The soldiers tell about their experiences in front of the camera and their names appear at the bottom of the screen. However, this is a distorted picture. It’s a feature film, it’s all acted out. It also couldn’t be a documentary because that would mean that Nick Broomfield had been present at this attack on the village and he couldn’t possibly have filmed it that way and he probably wouldn’t have survived given the enormous anger of the military at everything and everyone. Yet this film looks like a documentary and that is very clever. In this way it grips you even more.

What’s great about this film is also its downside. He grabs you too much and is too intense. It’s all still too close, it’s all too recently and it’s all still too real. It’s not a movie to sit back and watch, it’s cringingly frustrating to see how things are going in this war and especially the aggressiveness of the US military is horrible to watch. You don’t want to see this movie at all. You don’t want to know how bad it all is in Iraq and how many innocent people are being murdered. As a viewer you don’t want to know it all because it’s way too real and way too close.

Nick Broomfield is a great filmmaker and ‘Battle for Haditha’ is an impressive film. All just a little too much. Too much blood, too many limbs, too much violence, too much emotion. In short, too real.