The Fog Machine of War

The film is disarmingly funny because it teeters on the edge of absurdity at all times: we watch a paid actor’s flustered takes of an on-the-ground news report in Medina Wasl from the vantage point of a documentarian’s camera; American soldiers who roleplay as the town’s citizens scream “go home Yankees” at their fellow servicemen. The most strange and discomforting scene in the film involves a fake funeral service for a fallen soldier. It comes right after the battalion is ‘wiped out’ by an ambush and the emotional anguish of that failure is compounded by the painfully authentic eulogy being delivered; troops shed tears for their fictive fallen friend. Moss and Gerber don’t dwell on the charged emotion, though, they undercut it by moving to a commanding officer giving brief notes to the eulogist on his delivery of Psalm 21.