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Review in Cahiers du Cinema
TRANSLATION (Cahiers du Cinema):
Penny Allen’s The Soldier’s Tale
By Stéphane Delorme
The ideal counterpoint to Redacted (Brian De Palma) is perhaps Penny Allen’s The Soldier’s Tale.
Penny Allen got in touch with Les Cahiers du Cinéma to show us her 52-minute documentary.
An American cineaste living in Paris, she most notably directed Property (1978), the independent
film where Gus Van Sant began (soundman) and where he met Walt Curtis, the author of Mala Noche.
The Soldier’s Tale tells how Penny Allen met a soldier (named “Sergeant R.”) on an airplane,
how he spontaneously spoke to her about his experience in Iraq, how they then met up in a motel
for an in-depth discussion illustrated by photos and videos the soldier brought with him.
The success of the film lies in the soldier’s strange ambivalence – at first virulently opposed to the war,
then acknowledging its good side, then deciding ultimately to go back: because he has
no more money, because he can’t adapt back in the States, and also because he wants
to help other soldiers in combat. One feels, even if he doesn’t say so, that he is now more
at home in Iraq, that he belongs there.
Penny Allen’s attitude toward him is remarkable: combative at first, the engaged anti-war
activist, she then listens carefully to the soldier’s account with all its contradictions. She
tries via a kind Socratic questioning to help him express his latent horror about war,
but he clings to his paradoxical stance – horrified by, but drawn to a place where he
himself has more importance than he seems to have elsewhere.
One very astonishing sequence shows how the primary danger for American soldiers
is the IEDs (improvised explosive devices), buried by Iraqis alongside the roads.
The Americans learn to drive down the middle of the road to avoid the bombs and
thus push the local civilians to drive on the sides. So soldiers must learn how to
protect themselves (where and how to sit or stand in their humvees, whether to
keep the windows open or closed) against IEDs set by those lying in wait
a few hundred yards away.
Toward the end of the film, the Sergeant shows photos of dead Iraqis that he keeps.
He says they’re like baseball cards the soldiers trade. He confesses to having
nightmares since his return to the States but can’t get rid of these photos.
“Good times” and “bad times” – the soldier can’t say which. War is like life,
there are good moments and bad ones. Penny Allen’s perplexity is ours.
The young man talks sometimes like a child; he refuses to get to the bottom
of things, but he is clearly haunted. His soft voice, his embarrassed look,
his brusque confessions of horror, his nightmares, even his desire to talk
(but why has he agreed to be in this film?) reveal how he shattered he is.
But something still pushes him to go back yet again.
This is one of the rare portraits of veterans that we have access to
. For once a document doesn’t speak via raw images, like on the Internet,
but via oral witnessing. It is difficult to find such witnessing about Iraq
on the Internet. We boast and swagger on the Net, we have fun, or
sometimes we scare ourselves. But the spoken word is desperately absent.
To Penny Allen:
I want to congratulate you on your film.
I am in awe of your courage.
I am even more so of the soldier who decided
to allow his face to be shown.
Thank you for giving us a voice.
Blessings,
N. N., wife of an Iraq war veteran
A path-breaking testament to intellectual honesty and
artistic integrity, Penny Allen’s The Soldier’s Tale
chronicles the interplay between a working-class Iraq War
veteran and an antiwar filmmaker. Although the soldier’s
complex and contradictory views of the conflict,
illustrated in a revealing homemade video compiled
by the men of his unit, often appear disturbing,
Allen cannot bear to break off the mutually compelling
relationship in which she serves as exclusive confessor.
The result is an uncensored view of life at the heart of
the Occupation and an unblinking snapshot of
circumstances back in the United States that attract
soldiers like “Sgt. R” to military service, even in the
hellish environment of a vicious war. Beyond the
sloganeering of war supporters and antiwar activists,
The Soldier’s Tale places viewers inside the psyche of a
realistic but conflicted combatant, one who questions
why his country has sent him to impose order on a
seemingly ungrateful people but who still sees redeeming
value in what he does. The dramatic tension of this
exquisitely crafted documentary lies in Allen’s
willingness to let the soldier work out his thoughts
about the war and future plans on camera, even though he
ultimately arrives at choices that the filmmaker has
difficulty accepting.
-David A. Horowitz, Ph.D., author,
The People’s Voice: A Populist Cultural History of Modern America (2008)
See article in The Oregonian:
www.oregonlive.com/movies/index.ssf/2007/12/penny_allens_the_soldiers_tale.html
Back when independent filmmaking was truly independent,
then-Portland-based director Penny Allen made movies that
captured an era when Oregon was blessedly off the grid:
1981's Paydirt, partially filmed in an actual marijuana
field; and 1978's Property, which presaged the
real-estate battles to come. Having lived in Paris for
the last 15-plus years, Allen will be returning to
Portland to introduce her latest film, The Soldier's
Tale, composed largely of a hotel-room interview with
an Iraq war veteran she met on a trans-Atlantic flight in
2004. At that time, Sgt. R. (although we see his face
in the film, we don't learn the soldier's name) was on
his way home from Baghdad and, according to Allen,
initiated an intense conversation about the horrors he'd
witnessed. A soldier one day removed from combat,
as R. was then, may not be the most objective or stable
witness, but Allen pursued a correspondence with him.
He eventually sent her a compilation of video footage
shot by American soldiers in Iraq, titled simply "War Is
Hell." Allen used the images and Sgt. R.'s words to
create a comic-book-style photomontage, which was
exhibited in Portland in 2005. The film and still
photos are a remarkably candid peek into everyday
life for troops in R.'s position, from the mundanity
and home-movie-style mugging to some of the most
graphic and disturbing images of violence's aftermath
you're ever likely to see. These are images of bodies
squashed and twisted, brain matter and organs exposed,
difficult for even a hardened viewer to absorb. But they
are real, and anyone who thinks this war (or, for that
matter, any war) is worth fighting needs to be able to
look at them and agree that the war is worth this. To do
otherwise is to ignore reality.
After much persuading, Sgt. R. agrees to meet Allen for a
filmed interview, for which the images of war serve as a
backdrop. He seems like a well-meaning, average soldier,
not very articulate as she questions him -- sometimes
rather aggressively -- about his experiences and
reactions. He's almost schizophrenic in his responses at
times, expressing shock and dismay but also indicating
that he plans to re-enlist and go back. Any experience
that can make someone say, "I killed a kid one time --
I mean, I did the right thing," is one that needs to be
explored, and this simple, affecting film does just that.
Marc Mohan, The Oregonian
Penny Allen’s unexpected encounter with a soldier just
hours out of Iraq in 2004 has led to an unexpected film
in which the hell of war is documented by revealing
footage offered the filmmaker by the soldier himself
at the same time that his often incoherent reflections
on his experiences provide more insight into that hell
than he himself seems able to understand.
The Soldier’s Tale is a unique--and uniquely
disturbing--film.
Elinor Langer, author, A Hundred Little Hitlers
I find this it to be one of the most poignantly
revealing war stories I have viewed on screen.
Roland Atkinson, M.D. (psychiatrist),
excerpt from review on his website AtkinsonOnFilm
An infinitely complex story, because many things happen
in this film, The Soldier’s Tale….we discover a young man
with an innocent face, someone who has seen horrors and
who relates them without really condemning them, perhaps
even with a certain excitement. We see Penny, an American
living in Paris, alienated from her country at war,
touched by this young man who doesn’t say what she
hoped he would say, who says things that shock her.
What happens between the two characters, the soldier
and Penny, the narrator, is absolutely fascinating.
The Soldier’s Tale is not a political film but a
psychological fable whose moral eludes us, because
there is no moral in psychology. If we are expecting
a classical documentary, we are troubled by the
narrator who suddenly finds herself torn. All
political discourse is overwhelmed by the unexpected
tale of this soldier….we are witness to a live debate
between nothing less than good and evil.
We are shaken, turned upside down, and how
wonderful that is.
The Soldier’s Tale is the story of the distance between
political discourse, always ultimately simplistic because
it comes out of one’s head, and the infinitely more
complex and more obscure truth of real life, the
soul that cannot be reduced to concepts.
Pascale Kramer, novelist, author of The Living
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