What does it mean to lead men in war? What does it mean to come home? Hell and Back Again is a cinematically revolutionary film that asks and answers these questions with a power and intimacy no previous film about the conflict in Afghanistan has been able to achieve. It is a masterpiece in the cinema of war. The documentary starts off with a thought provoking contrast. We land in the middle of a deadly Afghan war scene, only to see the marines' family reunion in America shortly after. This contrast suggests the frightful incompatibility of these scenes, and hints at the question of how the marines cope with this.<br/><br/>During the story of Nathan back home, our point of view shifts from time to time to the Afghan war scene. These suggest the flashbacks that Nathan experiences.<br/><br/>Ironic scenes from Nathan playing Call of Duty confront the viewer with the barbarity it is of reducing war to an enjoyable video game.<br/><br/>The strongest moment in the film features one of Obama's speeches touching on the Afghan war. The film suggests the ridiculousness, emptiness and idiocy of Obama's idealized speeches about war, and subtly subverts it when a wounded and indifferent Nathan comments: "Well, Afgan people aren't watching." This film suggests that even physically unharmed marines come home profoundly wounded, be it emotional. Nathan's neurotic and unpredictable behaviour makes us question what injury cuts deeper, the physical or the emotional. "Hell and Back Again" is a film that was inexplicably nominated for an Oscar. I say inexplicably not because of the subject matter but because the film just seemed to be lacking and didn't seem finished. Yet, oddly, it came close to winning the Oscar for the best documentary feature of the year.<br/><br/>The film follows a marine, Nathan Harris, from his tour of duty in Afghanistan to his life at home following his severe injury in action. It goes back and forth again and again to both locations and the transitions back and forth are a bit jarring. So what did I think? Well, some of the film is quite good–such as seeing the tension and hellish battle conditions the men go through. But it also feels like they just ran out of money and stopped making the film–with so much unanswered and Harris's fate very, very uncertain. The film just seems to stop…and is maddening to watch because of this. As vital as the best war chronicles to come out in recent years, this is one every American ought to see.
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