thedrifter
04-29-08, 09:50 AM
Nick Broomfield's War: 'Battle for Haditha'
The controversial director explores a bloody battle in the Iraq war and asks: Was this an act of legitimate self-defense or negligent homicide?
By Karl Rozemeyer
His exposé portraits have always attracted the attention of the media. His investigation into the conspiracy theories surrounding Kurt Cobain's death in Kurt & Courtney resulted in Courtney Love threatening to sue the organizers of the Sundance Film Festival. His doc on serial killer Aileen Wournos inspired Charlize Theron's Oscar-winning turn in Monster. And now British filmmaker Nick Broomfield steps out of his comfort zone of documentary coverage to create an unflinching, harrowing drama. Battle for Haditha is based on events that unfolded on November 19, 2005 in Haditha, Iraq, when a convoy of Marines, enraged by the death of one of their own, goes on a killing spree in search of suspected insurgents. Twenty-four civilians die, including many women and children. Was this an act of legitimate self-defense or negligent homicide?
The film kicks off with several soldiers talking into the camera about their opinions on the war. One describes Iraq as the butthole of the world, the insurgents as dingleberries and the U.S. Military as a big **** coming out. Were these the words of that Marine?
Yeah, those were his words. In fact, those guys you see at the beginning of the film are ex-Marines. And so it was just them talking about themselves.
Was he given an outline of what to say? How much of the dialogue is improvised?
No. Those were long interviews. In fact, my son shot those. He was part of the crew and was very close to the Marines because he's pretty much their age. And so that put it as almost kind of documentary footage. It was just interviews with those guys.
You must have had a dilemma in staying true to the historical events with a scripted structure while trying to keep it fresh and unstaged by allowing the actors to adlib. Did you ever find these two needs negating each other, and how did you handle it?
Not really. Not really. The film is not a forensic report on what happened. I'm not saying and I don't think anyone thinks that every word that somebody says in this film was actually said on that day. I think, far more, the film is saying that this is the reason that incidents like Haditha happen: it's this kind of thinking, it's this kind of situation, it's this kind of environment that creates incidents like Haditha. Not just from the Marines' point of view, but from the Iraqi point of view, too. And it's really a film about warfare and the language of war. That's really what the film's about. Obviously we did a ton of research. We met with Marines from [the] company that was there that day. We met with survivors from the massacre; we met with members of the insurgency. There's a 6,000-page report done on what happened that day by the NCIS which I, believe it or not, pretty much read all the way through.
Where did you find the ex-Marines who acted in Haditha? What criteria did you use in choosing them? Were they ex-Marines when they signed on?
Well the criteria, more than anything, was that they were in touch with their emotions. And that they were representative in a way of the Marines who were there that day, the same kinds of people. And they were people that one could relate to.
How willing or reluctant were marines, survivors and witnesses to open up about what happened that day in Haditha?
Well, it took some time. I think it was painful for all of them. So for example went down to Camp Pendleton where some of the Marines were and we spent probably 3 days with them. So you got a pretty good sense of who they were and you cut through a lot of the bull**** after the first day. You'd go over the same points and just see whether they were being consistent with what they were saying and get lots of anecdotes and stories, and talk off the point and then we went out in the evening and did other things. And I think as much as anything in a film like this, you try to get a character profile of the people, get a sense of really who these people are as human beings.
You focus on some of the soldiers involved in the massacre. You focus on some of the commandment at HQ. You focus on the two guys that detonate the bomb and two families. How did you decide on whose stories to tell?
Well again, it was very much going through the witness statements, seeing who that family was, seeing who the family members were who were killed. For example the Hiba's relationship with Rashied was based on a real relationship. And I actually met the Marines who shot her husband. He described that incident, exactly what happened when they shot the guy.
Including high-fiving each other when he hit his target?
It's just how it went down. And they don't see anything wrong with it at all. For them it's like you shot someone who might be an insurgent. And that's what they're there for. So yeah, they do high-five it. They did watch it through the scope. That's all based on exactly what happened. But if you really get into it, it's a thousand times worse. You might call it harrowing, but it's a very diluted form of what happened.
You portray the marines as disconnected from this war, ensconced in their Humvees, rolling through the streets to death metal music and taking out potential threats by getting a visual on them and pressing a button, much like a video game. Did you find in your research that for some of the younger soldiers the war has been reduced to a glorified gory video game, as a means of survival?
I think by 2005, especially in places like Haditha, the Marines weren't able in their R & R to walk down the street. So there was minimum contact between them and the Iraqis. They didn't speak the language. They don't understand anything about Muslim culture. There was no training program that would tell them anything about it. So the Marines I knew were very distrusting of the Iraqis. And when we started filming, we had a number of difficult incidents where Iraqis would discover that some of the Marines had been to Fallujah. One of the guys had lost 3 of his brothers there, and there was an ugly incident where I thought there was going to be a fistfight, because both sides think the other one is completely evil. The Iraqis think the Marines are just like Darth Vader or something. And in a sense, the Marines see the Iraqis as dirty, untrustworthy. They say hello to you and stab you in the back: all that kind of stuff. And war brings all that kind of emotion out. Then they sort of got over that initial period. And 3 weeks later, they're all playing football together and swapping jokes and being amazed that they like each other. And in a sense I think that's very much what the film's about. It's saying that when you have a war situation, only the worst is going to come out. There's going to be nothing good coming out because it's a completely negative paranoid situation where everybody is operating on a worst case scenario. And [it is] dialogue between people and the ability to actually discover each other's humanity and humanness that is the way forward. I think that's very much the message of the film.
The scene where the bomb detonates in a built-up suburban neighborhood was shot in Jordan. How did people in the area respond to the filming?
Well, it took a lot of preparation. And we were fortunate that the Royal Jordanian Film Commission were behind the film and the royal family came down to the set to sort of sanctify what we were doing. The actual explosion of the Humvee happened about two-thirds of the way through so we'd been there for quite a while before that happened. We obviously had to block roads off and re-direct the traffic and keep people away. There were hundreds of little boys who were completely uncontrollable. So it was a big operational thing to pull that off.
You did not shy away from scenes of bloodshed. The single soldier that was killed is portrayed as recognizable but blown to bits. And you show it.
Well he was blown in two.
The execution-style killing of the five men in the car that was pulled over just before the killings is graphic. Did you ever think: maybe I should not show this, pan away, censor myself? Perhaps for the families involved?
Well the killing was much, much worse. All of it's much, much worse. What you have in that film is a very diluted form of what happened. In reality you have soldiers urinating in the heads of the people whose brains were hanging out. And that's all in the transcripts. You've got soldiers chasing each other around with body parts having a lark with people's legs and arms. I can go on.
Why did you choose not to shoot that?
Because I felt enough was shown. And I think audiences, unless they've been to war, unless they've been in a combat situation, have no clue as to what goes on. Not a clue. You don't even know where it starts, because once you let the animal out of the bag, it doesn't know any boundaries at all. Anything happens. You just get a little sniff of it here: a very, very diluted sniff of it. And you call it harrowing. But have a look at transcripts of a real war situation. Speak to somebody who's really been through what people do when they go wacko. And it's unbelievably different. I think there's no point in sort of blowing out the overload in an audience. [But] you want people to have some kind of mental reaction. One is making a film that will engage people's emotions and engage them, hopefully, intellectually. You don't want to make something that's so extreme that people just won't know what to do.
Your depiction of events differs wildly from the official press release which states that the 15 civilians were killed by a roadside bomb and not by the Marines. Have you had any response from the U.S. military about this film? And does it not make one question almost every civilian death we hear about?
Yeah. I think there are countless incidents, any day in a war, where innocent people get killed and there's an attempt to give a different spin to it. It's just what happens. And normally what they do is they bring the bombers in at the end. Several of the Marines we talked to said: "Why don't they just bomb the **** out of the houses? Then there's no evidence." That's what normally happens: you then bring the 500-pound bombs to just level the houses. End of story. And that's what happened in Fallujah. Level the city.
A probe into the killings at Haditha has determined that the deaths were a result of "collateral damage" and the U.S. has paid the relatives of the victims $2,500 for each of the dead civilians, and even less for the injured. Any thoughts on that?
Well, there is no compensation. I don't know how you can even start to assess what it is to lose your child. The Iraqi civilians are not the enemy, you're liberating them. So, I think it just all points up how confused and what a mess the situation is. And also that we have absolutely no right to be there. And the Iraqi people have to have their own self-determination. Whatever it is they've got to go through now, that's not really for us to adjudicate.
Have you seen Redacted, which takes a similar approach? Did you refer to other docs like Gunner Palace?
No, Redacted was actually made after my film. It was released beforehand. Yeah, I saw literally everything I could before I shot the film. I saw Gunner's Palace and looked at stacks of stuff on YouTube — a lot of it is home movie stuff that Marines shot on their telephones. I looked at a lot of the documentaries that have been done [like] My Country, My Country, [and] Ghosts of Abu Ghraib. And I also met with every single journalist who had been involved not only in this incident but who had done extensive reporting in Iraq, [including] Patrick Coburn and George White, of The New York Times.
What are your expectations for this film? And can you explain why so many war movies, while often critically acclaimed — In the Valley of Elah, Stop-Loss — make so little at the box office. Is America saturated and too tired of hearing about this war to care?
I think you have to ask the question, because of what's happened. I think what you're talking about is a much bigger issue. And I think that in the 60's and 70's Americans felt that if they went on a civil rights demonstration or they protested, they had a voice, that they would be heard, that it would make a difference. I don't think anyone thinks it makes any difference at all anymore. I think people feel alienated, they feel uninvolved. Most of the people in this country are against the war. So until there's a massive political change of administration and in vision and a feeling that the people have a voice and are being listened to, it's going to stay this way. We'll all be looking at Britney until our dying days, the way it's going.
Ellie
The controversial director explores a bloody battle in the Iraq war and asks: Was this an act of legitimate self-defense or negligent homicide?
By Karl Rozemeyer
His exposé portraits have always attracted the attention of the media. His investigation into the conspiracy theories surrounding Kurt Cobain's death in Kurt & Courtney resulted in Courtney Love threatening to sue the organizers of the Sundance Film Festival. His doc on serial killer Aileen Wournos inspired Charlize Theron's Oscar-winning turn in Monster. And now British filmmaker Nick Broomfield steps out of his comfort zone of documentary coverage to create an unflinching, harrowing drama. Battle for Haditha is based on events that unfolded on November 19, 2005 in Haditha, Iraq, when a convoy of Marines, enraged by the death of one of their own, goes on a killing spree in search of suspected insurgents. Twenty-four civilians die, including many women and children. Was this an act of legitimate self-defense or negligent homicide?
The film kicks off with several soldiers talking into the camera about their opinions on the war. One describes Iraq as the butthole of the world, the insurgents as dingleberries and the U.S. Military as a big **** coming out. Were these the words of that Marine?
Yeah, those were his words. In fact, those guys you see at the beginning of the film are ex-Marines. And so it was just them talking about themselves.
Was he given an outline of what to say? How much of the dialogue is improvised?
No. Those were long interviews. In fact, my son shot those. He was part of the crew and was very close to the Marines because he's pretty much their age. And so that put it as almost kind of documentary footage. It was just interviews with those guys.
You must have had a dilemma in staying true to the historical events with a scripted structure while trying to keep it fresh and unstaged by allowing the actors to adlib. Did you ever find these two needs negating each other, and how did you handle it?
Not really. Not really. The film is not a forensic report on what happened. I'm not saying and I don't think anyone thinks that every word that somebody says in this film was actually said on that day. I think, far more, the film is saying that this is the reason that incidents like Haditha happen: it's this kind of thinking, it's this kind of situation, it's this kind of environment that creates incidents like Haditha. Not just from the Marines' point of view, but from the Iraqi point of view, too. And it's really a film about warfare and the language of war. That's really what the film's about. Obviously we did a ton of research. We met with Marines from [the] company that was there that day. We met with survivors from the massacre; we met with members of the insurgency. There's a 6,000-page report done on what happened that day by the NCIS which I, believe it or not, pretty much read all the way through.
Where did you find the ex-Marines who acted in Haditha? What criteria did you use in choosing them? Were they ex-Marines when they signed on?
Well the criteria, more than anything, was that they were in touch with their emotions. And that they were representative in a way of the Marines who were there that day, the same kinds of people. And they were people that one could relate to.
How willing or reluctant were marines, survivors and witnesses to open up about what happened that day in Haditha?
Well, it took some time. I think it was painful for all of them. So for example went down to Camp Pendleton where some of the Marines were and we spent probably 3 days with them. So you got a pretty good sense of who they were and you cut through a lot of the bull**** after the first day. You'd go over the same points and just see whether they were being consistent with what they were saying and get lots of anecdotes and stories, and talk off the point and then we went out in the evening and did other things. And I think as much as anything in a film like this, you try to get a character profile of the people, get a sense of really who these people are as human beings.
You focus on some of the soldiers involved in the massacre. You focus on some of the commandment at HQ. You focus on the two guys that detonate the bomb and two families. How did you decide on whose stories to tell?
Well again, it was very much going through the witness statements, seeing who that family was, seeing who the family members were who were killed. For example the Hiba's relationship with Rashied was based on a real relationship. And I actually met the Marines who shot her husband. He described that incident, exactly what happened when they shot the guy.
Including high-fiving each other when he hit his target?
It's just how it went down. And they don't see anything wrong with it at all. For them it's like you shot someone who might be an insurgent. And that's what they're there for. So yeah, they do high-five it. They did watch it through the scope. That's all based on exactly what happened. But if you really get into it, it's a thousand times worse. You might call it harrowing, but it's a very diluted form of what happened.
You portray the marines as disconnected from this war, ensconced in their Humvees, rolling through the streets to death metal music and taking out potential threats by getting a visual on them and pressing a button, much like a video game. Did you find in your research that for some of the younger soldiers the war has been reduced to a glorified gory video game, as a means of survival?
I think by 2005, especially in places like Haditha, the Marines weren't able in their R & R to walk down the street. So there was minimum contact between them and the Iraqis. They didn't speak the language. They don't understand anything about Muslim culture. There was no training program that would tell them anything about it. So the Marines I knew were very distrusting of the Iraqis. And when we started filming, we had a number of difficult incidents where Iraqis would discover that some of the Marines had been to Fallujah. One of the guys had lost 3 of his brothers there, and there was an ugly incident where I thought there was going to be a fistfight, because both sides think the other one is completely evil. The Iraqis think the Marines are just like Darth Vader or something. And in a sense, the Marines see the Iraqis as dirty, untrustworthy. They say hello to you and stab you in the back: all that kind of stuff. And war brings all that kind of emotion out. Then they sort of got over that initial period. And 3 weeks later, they're all playing football together and swapping jokes and being amazed that they like each other. And in a sense I think that's very much what the film's about. It's saying that when you have a war situation, only the worst is going to come out. There's going to be nothing good coming out because it's a completely negative paranoid situation where everybody is operating on a worst case scenario. And [it is] dialogue between people and the ability to actually discover each other's humanity and humanness that is the way forward. I think that's very much the message of the film.
The scene where the bomb detonates in a built-up suburban neighborhood was shot in Jordan. How did people in the area respond to the filming?
Well, it took a lot of preparation. And we were fortunate that the Royal Jordanian Film Commission were behind the film and the royal family came down to the set to sort of sanctify what we were doing. The actual explosion of the Humvee happened about two-thirds of the way through so we'd been there for quite a while before that happened. We obviously had to block roads off and re-direct the traffic and keep people away. There were hundreds of little boys who were completely uncontrollable. So it was a big operational thing to pull that off.
You did not shy away from scenes of bloodshed. The single soldier that was killed is portrayed as recognizable but blown to bits. And you show it.
Well he was blown in two.
The execution-style killing of the five men in the car that was pulled over just before the killings is graphic. Did you ever think: maybe I should not show this, pan away, censor myself? Perhaps for the families involved?
Well the killing was much, much worse. All of it's much, much worse. What you have in that film is a very diluted form of what happened. In reality you have soldiers urinating in the heads of the people whose brains were hanging out. And that's all in the transcripts. You've got soldiers chasing each other around with body parts having a lark with people's legs and arms. I can go on.
Why did you choose not to shoot that?
Because I felt enough was shown. And I think audiences, unless they've been to war, unless they've been in a combat situation, have no clue as to what goes on. Not a clue. You don't even know where it starts, because once you let the animal out of the bag, it doesn't know any boundaries at all. Anything happens. You just get a little sniff of it here: a very, very diluted sniff of it. And you call it harrowing. But have a look at transcripts of a real war situation. Speak to somebody who's really been through what people do when they go wacko. And it's unbelievably different. I think there's no point in sort of blowing out the overload in an audience. [But] you want people to have some kind of mental reaction. One is making a film that will engage people's emotions and engage them, hopefully, intellectually. You don't want to make something that's so extreme that people just won't know what to do.
Your depiction of events differs wildly from the official press release which states that the 15 civilians were killed by a roadside bomb and not by the Marines. Have you had any response from the U.S. military about this film? And does it not make one question almost every civilian death we hear about?
Yeah. I think there are countless incidents, any day in a war, where innocent people get killed and there's an attempt to give a different spin to it. It's just what happens. And normally what they do is they bring the bombers in at the end. Several of the Marines we talked to said: "Why don't they just bomb the **** out of the houses? Then there's no evidence." That's what normally happens: you then bring the 500-pound bombs to just level the houses. End of story. And that's what happened in Fallujah. Level the city.
A probe into the killings at Haditha has determined that the deaths were a result of "collateral damage" and the U.S. has paid the relatives of the victims $2,500 for each of the dead civilians, and even less for the injured. Any thoughts on that?
Well, there is no compensation. I don't know how you can even start to assess what it is to lose your child. The Iraqi civilians are not the enemy, you're liberating them. So, I think it just all points up how confused and what a mess the situation is. And also that we have absolutely no right to be there. And the Iraqi people have to have their own self-determination. Whatever it is they've got to go through now, that's not really for us to adjudicate.
Have you seen Redacted, which takes a similar approach? Did you refer to other docs like Gunner Palace?
No, Redacted was actually made after my film. It was released beforehand. Yeah, I saw literally everything I could before I shot the film. I saw Gunner's Palace and looked at stacks of stuff on YouTube — a lot of it is home movie stuff that Marines shot on their telephones. I looked at a lot of the documentaries that have been done [like] My Country, My Country, [and] Ghosts of Abu Ghraib. And I also met with every single journalist who had been involved not only in this incident but who had done extensive reporting in Iraq, [including] Patrick Coburn and George White, of The New York Times.
What are your expectations for this film? And can you explain why so many war movies, while often critically acclaimed — In the Valley of Elah, Stop-Loss — make so little at the box office. Is America saturated and too tired of hearing about this war to care?
I think you have to ask the question, because of what's happened. I think what you're talking about is a much bigger issue. And I think that in the 60's and 70's Americans felt that if they went on a civil rights demonstration or they protested, they had a voice, that they would be heard, that it would make a difference. I don't think anyone thinks it makes any difference at all anymore. I think people feel alienated, they feel uninvolved. Most of the people in this country are against the war. So until there's a massive political change of administration and in vision and a feeling that the people have a voice and are being listened to, it's going to stay this way. We'll all be looking at Britney until our dying days, the way it's going.
Ellie