This article is part of a series on various films at DIFF 2007.

Nick Broomfield’s “The Battle for Haditha” has not yet gotten enough press. In some ways, this is understandable. Despite the explosive subject matter, this is a low-key film. There are no big-name actors, no enormous budget, and, most importantly, the picture’s stylistic elements tend toward a stark, bare-boned simplicity. Nevertheless, this is a film to see.

Broomfield cast many amateurs for key roles, among them some ex-Marines and Iraqi refugees, and this is both good and bad. There is a definite air of authenticity surrounding the film, yet the acting occasionally appears forced. Some of the dialogue struck me as contrived- although this may have something to do with the subtitles. I do not speak Arabic, but having been accompanied by an Arabic speaker at the screening, I discovered that the subtitles are not as good as they could have been.

This movie is earnest, but, in some scenes, it also comes across as didactic. Do we really need to see the chief insurgent character, a disgruntled former member of the Iraqi army, spelling out the message with lines such as: “The Americans created the insurgency by dis-banding the army”? Does the chief insurgent furthermore have to opine stiffly on the future of Iraq, noting (in a manner that suggests that he is channeling Fukuyama) the bleak possibility of the country inheriting a new leader, someone who will be a helluva lot worse than Saddam?

Yet in spite of a few missteps, this is a haunting picture. I can’t get it out of my head, and I probably won’t for a long time. Broomfield captures the comings and goings of the residents of Haditha, people whose lives are about to be shattered, with intimacy and grace. I was floored by the character of Rashied (Duraid A. Ghaieb), a young man besotted with his pregnant wife (Yasmine Hanani – who attended the screening alongside the director, and ex-Marine actors Elliot Ruiz and Eric Mehalacopoulos), keenly aware of the growing danger of staying with his family in Haditha, and yet unable to do much about it.

Alongside U.S. Marines and Iraqi civilians, Broomfield dares to portray the members of the Iraqi insurgency as human beings. These people are not just fundamentalist foreigners, they are also ordinary locals who are infuriated with what has happened to their country. This simple truth is about as inconvenient as anything Al Gore can come up with, and is bound to make American audiences squirm in their seats.

At the Q & A afterwards, Broomfield pointed out that the massacre at Haditha has been extensively researched, and the script was an attempt to stick as faithfully as one could to real-life events. The movie was shot on location in Jordan, and grim anecdotes were related: apparently, one of the Iraqi families featured in the film wanted to pack up and leave in the middle of the shoot, highlighting the adversity of refugee life for the crew and the rest of the cast.

The audience, meanwhile, was happily irreverent. People expressed their anger with the U.S. occupation of Iraq with ease, blunt questions were asked, awkward pauses were observed, and the entire occasion had a fresh, unscripted feel one so rarely gets in similar settings in the States. Kudos to the festival organizers for this, honestly.

One woman asked if “The Battle for Haditha” would get past “censorship” in the States, a question which reminded me of misconceptions people hold about the U.S. film industry. In the U.S., the real censorship lies in trying to find a distributor for a potentially controversial film. The MPAA can cripple a movie’s chance at being distributed by issuing an NC-17 rating, but such ratings are usually tied to graphic representations of sex. “Battle for Haditha” has secured a U.S. distributor and will, hopefully, be seen by at least a fraction of the people who need to see it most: those among us who continue to defend the ongoing, blood-spattered mess that has been made of Iraq.

The best moments of the film have to do with the peculiar duality of wartime violence: how it is both personal and mediated, vicious and strangely, grotesquely casual. It is the antithesis to all life, and yet it can make its perpetrators feel alive. No amount of theorizing can ultimately reveal its true nature, and Broomfield understands this. Sometimes, all you need to do is watch.

Tags: controversy, film, iraq, reviews, u.s., violence, war