Full Battle Rattle (Tony Gerber & Jesse Moss, 2008)

[sskeats]

I'm a very proud dad besides being an addict when it comes to films on discs. Don't ask how many films in my collection but way over 10,000. My son says I didn't talk to him until he told me he was going to be a director. So I hope any Crit Forum friends/members in NYC or visiting will check out my son's film coming to the Film Forum from July 9-22.

It's a doc called FULL BATTLE RATTLE. Opened at the Berlinale where Karen Cooper, the Director and President of the Film Forum board, saw the film and grabbed it for her wondrous, unique house.

From Berlin, it went on to play at Austen's SXSW where it won the Special Jury Award. It was shown at Hot Docs in Toronto and Full Frame in North Carolina, and now is being shown around the world from
Istanbul to Jerusalem to Maui to Buenos Aires to Sheffield, UK.

The London Times has called the film "a peach of a doc..utterly stunning. It would be a sublime satire if it wasn't horrifically true."

Anthony Kaufman, who's written so perceptively on Iraq cinema in the Village Voice, reviews FBR in the summer issue of UTNE Reader.

"More Catch 22 than No End in Sight. Full Battle Rattle proves not only that truth is stranger than fiction, but that the two are also impossible to tell apart."

Kaufman adds:

"The wry, provocative documentary... reveals just as much about America's mislaid plans as any on-the-ground report from Baghdad."

There's an unannounced Q&A with the directors just for my movie buddies on July 10th after the 6:15pm screening. Come say hello. Love to meet any and all of this troop. Tickets go on sale online July 2. And thank you kindly for reading.

And thanks for letting me post this recent family pride.

Here's the most recent [url=http://www.fullbattlerattlemovie.com...Trailer_LR.mov]trailer[/url].

Enjoy
Jerry

[flyonthewall2983]

I'm not sure this belongs here, but many congratulations to you and your son.

[HerrSchreck]

Why wouldn't it? It's a new film doing wonderful on the fest/exhibition circuit, and playing in an outrageously difficult venue to aqcuire exhibition, NYC's Film Forum. The only thing "odd" is that the poster is the director's father. He put in in the correct place, "New Films"-- I see nothing wrong here even though he's obviously unapologetically the proud father.

[sskeats]

Thanks Herr Schreck...and indeed, the Film Forum has got to be one of the prime launching pads for a doc domestically.

Should I apologize for being proud? Perhaps I should be "the proud yet humble Dad."

In any case, I hope you get to see the film.

Jerry

[flyonthewall2983]

Why wouldn't it? It's a new film doing wonderful on the fest/exhibition circuit, and playing in an outrageously difficult venue to aqcuire exhibition, NYC's Film Forum. The only thing "odd" is that the poster is the director's father. He put in in the correct place, "New Films"-- I see nothing wrong here even though he's obviously unapologetically the proud father.

Point taken. To the OP, my bad.

[Antoine Doinel]

What a great, belated Father's Day gift! Congrats to you and your son.

[AWA]

Why wouldn't it? It's a new film doing wonderful on the fest/exhibition circuit, and playing in an outrageously difficult venue to aqcuire exhibition, NYC's Film Forum. The only thing "odd" is that the poster is the director's father. He put in in the correct place, "New Films"-- I see nothing wrong here even though he's obviously unapologetically the proud father.

Point taken. To the OP, my bad.

But it should be retitled like everything else in here though.

To the original poster - congrats on your son's film achievement!

[moviscop]

damn good documentary idea. i really want to see it. congrats on your sons success

[Len]

This looks really interesting, really hoping I get the chance to see this at some point (if possible, I hope you offer this to Finland's HIFF or Docpoint festivals. It'd fit great in either festival). Thanks for the heads up!

[jbeall]

The Nation's Stuart Klawans reviews Full Battle Rattle.

[sskeats]

I want to thank all of you for your informative posts and your response. I will pass them on to the director. He first found out about that great review in The Nation through the post here that I forwarded. And to the suggestions about film festivals in particular countries, I will pass those suggestions on to him as well.

And to those who are in the New York City area and its vicinity, tickets for the entire run go on sale today.

I'll go there for the July 10th screening and Q&A. Please come and say hello.

Thanks,

Jerry

[sskeats]

Advance Review of FULL BATTLE RATTLE in next week's NEW YORK MAGAZINE by David Edelstein

Watching the coolly ironic documentary Full Battle Rattle, one's heart goes out to Lieutenant Colonel Robert McLaughlin as he sits in a daze in front of his desert headquarters, having seen most of his battalion slaughtered the night before by Iraqi insurgents. "Am I a failure?" he asks, then answers, "Actions speak louder than words." The poor man: He did his diligent best to bring order to the tiny village of Medina Wasl. His men murdered only a few innocent civilians, and he more or less averted civil war between Sunnis and Shiites after the assassination of the deputy mayor's son (on video, to shouts of "Allahu Akbar!"). The worst part is that there he was on camera when the massacre of his men went down, celebrating the return of authority to the Iraqi mayor. ("Jobs are coming back to the community!") Now he has to eulogize the dead. Then he has to pack up and head to Iraq and do it for real—and hope to God that life doesn't replicate art.

Full Battle Rattle is an indelible vision of modern war, a not-so-fun fun-house mirror of the Iraq occupation set in California's Mojave Desert. The place, 1,200 miles square, is called the National Training Center—a billion-dollar "virtual Iraq" at Fort Irwin with an acting troupe of hundreds (many of them Iraqi immigrants), in which military personnel get a mini-jolt of what they're in for. The film is freaky, amusing, and sickening in equal measures—part fly-on-the-wall vérité, part multiple-perspective Altmanesque tragicomedy. Soldiers writhe on the ground choking in their blood, and then Americans and Iraqis pick themselves up and stand in line at ice-cream trucks; it's like Disney World with the fireworks aimed lower.

Directors Tony Gerber and Jesse Moss don't lead with their politics, whatever they might be. And on one level, the mere existence of the center is reassuring: Conventional antiwar wisdom holds that the Cheney-Rumsfeld armchair warmongers had little regard for the welfare of young, inexperienced soldiers with no knowledge of Iraqi culture. That might have been true at the outset of the occupation, but now our tax dollars are at work creating a kind of alternate reality show in which "simulation architects" concoct intricate scenarios (miscommunications, suicide bombings) and devise meaty roles for Iraqis who worry they're somehow betraying the folks back home. But they need the money—often to send to the folks back home.

The less reassuring part is that the situation—even fictionalized, softened, without the crucial components of lawless private contractors and reconstruction stalled by incompetence and fraud—is borderline hopeless. Full Battle Rattle begins as a showbiz comedy, with an almost stoned view of the occupation, but gradually the bottom crumbles and drops out. The plastic dummies of dead soldiers have wounds modeled on actual casualties—they're horrifying. The reenactments, meanwhile, take on a mystical quality: The masks become real. The Iraqi actors—who know that the political (and physical) infrastructure of their country has collapsed, who still have families in peril—look askance (no matter what their script says) when McLaughlin tells them that the U.S. will guarantee their security. A soldier admits there are moments when he despises the Iraqis, even though he knows they're actors. An illegal Iraqi immigrant, Nagi, who plays a policeman, works like mad to ingratiate himself with the officers: Maybe if he helps the Americans he will not be sent back, where he will probably be killed for collaborating. It's a little like what happens to real Iraqi policemen—except most of them die.

The only subjects in Full Battle Rattle having a whale of a time are the Americans who play Iraqi insurgents. Gerber and Moss track their planning sessions; the men all but rub their hands with glee at the prospect of causing chaos instead of trying to prevent it. They get to pick off the enemy the way soldiers do in movies, the way Americans can't in a war they should never have been fighting—here a catastrophic farce, a let's-pretend that ends with a mass deployment to hell. --David Edelstein

[moviscop]

All the New Yorkers here will have a blast. For the rest of us, I think we are gonna have to wait for Netflix...

[sskeats]

Not true, Movie Cop. Full Battle Rattle is in Seattle in August.

AUGUST 8 - 14, Friday - Thursday at 7, 9pm (plus Sat & Sun at 3, 5pm)

At The Northwest Film Forum....and my son mentioned just yesterday that there is a run in San Francisco. but not certain about it...so let me check it out and get back to you.

Jerry

[moviscop]

oh wow, that is doable.

thanks for the info!

[Grand Illusion]

This sounds fantastic.

[sskeats]

The film is due for a run in San Francisco sometime in October, my son told me quickly in passing.

When I have the particulars, I'll post them here.

[sskeats]

David,

I believe there are. I need to check that specifically with Tony.

Here's a post I put on another forum as to the critical reception stateside vs. abroad (at least until a couple of days ago when the Klawans/Edelstein reviews surfaced)....I believe you'll find it interesting.

When the film premiered at the Berlin Film Festival, it was lauded by the London Times, Le Monde, the International and Independent Press.

However, stateside trade papers, Variety and Hollywood Reporter **** on the film. They were critical of what appeared to be a neutral point of view in the doc concerning the war. (see excerpts below.)

Clearly from the Edelstein review posted above , the film has a complex message about the war that is not underlined or hammered to the viewer, but allows the intelligent viewer to grasp it without that message being telegraphed or beaten to death.

Karen Cooper, president and director of the Film Forum in NYC, saw the film in Berlin, got it and liked the film enough to tell the directors she wanted to screen it at her house whether it got a distributor or not. It opens there July 9. The Film Forum for those who don't know is one of the key programmers for independent films in the US. Here's a link if you need to know more.

The pans from the US trades discouraged distributors in the states despite the film's win of a special Jury Prize at SXSW. Indeed, the film obtained its distributors internationally. Here are the quotes from the US trades:

What prevents the pic from soaring to the level of expose, ironically, is that helmers Tony Gerber and Jesse Moss come across as perhaps too nonjudgmental. Though impartiality is to be applauded in the docu form, auds predisposed to shock at the absurdist nature of the proceedings will chafe that neither Gerber nor Moss ever interject to ask just what the hell's going on.

The movie never produces a moment where this fake war comes to reflect or symbolize the reality of a disastrous war.

So my post of the David Edelstein review in New York Magazine, where the review this coming week will be the lead position over Hellboy2, Journey to the Center of the Earth, August, all opening the same week and all so called blockbusters. That's quite a coup and retribution for this indie film and a large foul wind directed at those numb-bells at the trades.

The fact that perceptive American critics understand the power and complexity of the film and its relationship to the disastrous war is a relief to my son, his co-director, and of course, to this ol' dad. This understanding of the film is rolling in from the New York press and journals. One can see it in the take on the film in the current issue of Film Comment and in Stuart Klawans' review in the current issue of The Nation, linked below.

So I hope this long post is of interest to you and I'm happy to continue the discussion if you'd like.

Thanks for reading.

Jerry

[moviscop]

I hope you don't mind if I ask you a question. Apart from the obvious level of happiness you have from your son's success. How does his political bias compare with your views and do you or do you not agree with the way he presents these views.

Not trying to put you on the spot, but since it is a political piece, I have noticed son and father often disagree politically.

[sskeats]

Not in the least. Speaking about any disagreement. Certainly not in the political arena.

I am also very pleased that he presented his views cinematically with a regard for the viewer rather than as a forum for his explicit politics.

I know on the festival circuit, he was asked many times what his politics were. I think the discerning viewer can cull that from the film although the industry trades skewered him because they couldn't.

However, as an aside, Movie Cop, like most fathers and sons we've have a few bumps here and there.

[souvenir]

You've been a great salesman for your son's film here. Between these enthusiastic posts and reviews and the preview I saw at Film Forum the other day, I'm sold on seeing the movie. I'm just amazed that the military officials I saw in the trailer even agreed to be interviewed. I'm sure they didn't realize they would essentially be laughed at, but some of the footage just in that trailer is still unbelievable.

[sskeats]

I'm glad you're going to see the film. But I'm not sure that everyone will be essentially laughing at the military. Many might be crying for them. Others might think their preparation is well spent. Others might find their zealousness toward the war blunted. I think that's the power of the film...it let's you examine your own politics, feeding in this new perspective of what it might be like to fight in Iraq... a perspective that has not been demonstrated by the docs we've seen thus far nor by the footage of the war itself as we've been shown it.

In another forum, David Edelstein responded to one of my posts. And I hope he doesn't mind my carrying it over to here since he says it so much better than I can express it.

Delighted to be cited. I think the film will get a lot of attention in NYC, as it offers a distinctly different angle on the occupation and can in no way be spun by the wingnuts as "anti-troops." From an "a_film_by" perspective, I should say that it is quite orchestrated-- talking heads, tricky montage--while in some scenes offering a suggestion of Wiseman-like verite. (I say Wiseman-like--although perhaps should say "Wiseman-lite," since none of the scenes go on that long and are, of course, cunningly edited.) The point is that it is a very skillful weave with no narration or overt editorializing.

It's that last sentence that impresses me about the film and which was missed by the industry trades.

[moviscop]

It is a strange concept indeed. I think the point of the film, from what I have seen, is to bring home the Iraq situation in a visual way in which nobody is actually harmed. However, a political statement does seem a bit far fetched from what I have seen. I feel like it is aiming toward making the war in Iraq tangible. However, these are pre-view comments.

[sskeats]

Some NY press (Village Voice / NYTimes) along with the opening today. I thought a couple of weeks ago that this film could stay under the radar...but fortunately, I don't think that's happening.

The position and the critic in all the publications have been front rank. Admirable. Hope you catch the film.

[sskeats]

T-Meter Critics

By the way... CNN / Wolf Blitzer's show the Situation Room will air a segment this Thursday on FBR featuring an in-studio interview with directors this Thursday.