Shakespeare wrote, “The evil that men do lives after them.”
Olivier Morel’s film “On the Bridge,” which I viewed on Saturday, October 8, 2011, at the Chicago 47th International Film Festival, is a powerful, intense examination of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), focusing on interviews with veterans, families and friends affected by this “cancer of the spirit,” (as it is termed by one soldier in the film.)
Veteran Jason Moon, whose original songs provide the musical backdrop for the film, put it this way in one haunting song lyric:
“Somewhere between lost and alone, trying to find my way home.
I’m tryin’ to find my way home. It’s hard to fight an enemy that lives inside your head.”
Nowhere is this truer than in those returning Afghanistan and Iraq War veterans who suffer from PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). Olivier Morel, a French-born film-maker on the faculty of Notre Dame, began filming a documentary about returning veterans in cities across the United States over three years ago. The film, which is showing at the Chicago 47th International Film Festival, is “On the Bridge.” (*Review to follow).
What follows are exclusive interview remarks from Olivier Morel, the Director, who was kind enough to answer five questions about the documentary that screened on October 8, 2011 (www.onthebridgethemovie.com).
1) What initially inspired you to start making this documentary 3 years ago? Did you personally know some returning veterans …what?
This film would never have been possible without the fantastic women and men, the Iraq War veterans that I met while starting to develop what was at first a simple curiosity for the “subject:” They are the ones who inspired me. My initial intent was not necessarily to make a “film.” The very reason why I started working on the issue of war trauma among returning veterans from the war in Iraq is that I got really angry about the epidemic of suicides by returning veterans of the wars…8,000 a year, 23 a day.
The soldiers who are struggling with war-related psychological trauma “survived” the war, but many kill themselves at home and most of those deaths are completely anonymous. In most cases, those deaths are not seen as are war-related but rather as “personal” matters affecting “individuals.” It tells a lot about how our society relates to the current wars and those who are sacrificing for them.
To put it in a nutshell, I have the unpleasant feeling that, on the one hand, there is a positive perception that “glorifies” the “heroes” who are coming back from the war zones, and that, on the other hand, there is a negative perception, a discomfort, a taboo, or worse, a profound and insidious disgust with regard to what the soldiers have been through in combat zones, regarding the kinds of actions in which they have been involved, the things they have done, etc.
Instead of helping us comprehend what the soldiers have been through, this attitude is blocking us from understanding in all of the senses of the word, what is going on here. I had the unpleasant impression that neither the families nor the communities nor, the soldiers themselves were prepared for their return from war. And that raises enormous questions: about our culture, our culture of the war, our understanding of what it means to be a soldier, to serve a country, to sacrifice, to be a warrior, and of course, to make the highly challenging adjustment back to civilian life when they return, surrounded with civilians who have no clue of what being in a war means. So, the consequences of this gap between the “good” and the “bad” soldier are just devastating.
That’s why the film is “devastating.” A good friend of mine, who runs a movie theater, after having watched the film, said: I have tried to film in this “in-between” zone, this grey zone, trying to avoid the “good” and the “bad,” guy. This is an observational documentary.
The film is straightforward in that sense. No sentiments, no myth, but, I hope, a profound compassion, at the end. This is also what I have done with those mute portraits of the protagonists who are watching the viewer, looking straight into the lens of the camera, at the end of the film. To a certain extent and without sounding too convoluted I am trying to give the impression that this is a film that watches us, that interrogates us, instead of a film that we are passively watching.
So after the initial shock, I started investigating around 2007. Now the subject is less and less anonymous, mostly because the post 9/11 era veterans are organizing themselves and starting to constitute a real “political” and social lobby in our society. Also because there are wonderful individuals who are publishing books or making great films (think about the unexpected recognition of a feature film like The Hurt Locker, great documentaries like Restrepo, Poster Girl, Where Soldiers Come From, for example), that are, very slowly, exposing the general public to these issue. I still do not see a drastic change in the overall people’s attitude toward the issue, but I hope this will occur.
My interest in the subject might also be related to the fact that I am European citizen (born and raised in France) who emigrated to the U.S. in 2005. While I was developing this project, I was also applying for United States citizenship. As a European, I belong to the first generation that never got drafted in a war since the beginning of the 20th century.
2) How did you first become interested in film, and what is your “official” title at Notre Dame?
I have worked as a radio, print and TV journalist in Europe for almost 20 years (I started when I was just 18…). While I had collaborated on many TV documentaries, I never had directed one before On the Bridge, which is feature-length.
At the University of Notre Dame I teach as a lecturer and also work for the Doctoral program in Literature.
3) We talked a bit about your country of origin. Do you have any insight into how the people(s) of Europe (including France) view the U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan at this time?
It is very dangerous to generalize. Historians, sociologists, among others, are already investigating this very carefully. Without misrepresenting things here, one can say that in most European countries, including those who joined the coalition which invaded Iraq in 2003, a vast majority of the population was, to say the least, very suspicious about the reasons to go off to war against Iraq, and more specifically, I think there were not many European citizens who believed in the official version(s) provided by the U.S. administration: the existence of WMDs, for example, but more importantly, the fact that Iraq had anything at all to do with the 9/11 attacks, etc.
Now, I am only focusing on Iraq in my response. The case of the war in Afghanistan is slightly different in many ways, and it would take me a long time and too much space here to explain why. You probably know that the French are involved in Afghanistan, and that, by the way, more French soldiers died in Afghanistan this year than ever since the beginning of the war ten years ago.
4) I worked with head injury patients at a Sylvan Learning Center I owned for close to 20 years. Your film is about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, another serious mental condition. What do you think is going to happen to all these returning damaged young men and women? More of them were “saved” in these conflicts than in any other previous wars, but saved in what fashion? Do you think the U.S. is equipped to deal with such serious mental disorders as these, and, if not, what would you as an educator and a human being like to see done to help these injured soldiers that isn’t being done?
In his second address, President Abraham Lincoln said that the Nation had to “care for him who has borne the battle and for his woman and orphan.” Unfortunately, instead, the Veterans’ Administration is far from living up this motto.
There is massive agreement in the veterans’ community about the fact there is a shameful lack of preparation and adequacy in the current system. The lack of preparation has a strong impact on the epidemic of suicides by soldiers/veterans in the U.S.
This was not only a lack of anticipation, but, I think, also a political choice. Shortly before the beginning of the invasion of Iraq, on February 3, 2003, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld told the soldiers in Italy that the war “could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months.” (*On the 10th anniversary of the war, on-air commentator Wolf Blitzer marveled somewhat disingenuously that no one thought the war would last ten years when it began. This may be true for Wolf Blitzer, but some of us who were protesting it as it started felt otherwise.)
Also, in 2003, in January, the Veterans Administration announced that a cost-cutting move would start turning away middle-income veterans who applied for medical benefits. As a result, in 2007, a team of researchers from Harvard found that 1.8 million veterans lacked of health insurance. This is just an example taken among the many cuts that were imposed on the VA’s budget in this period[1]. For me, this was extremely difficult to comprehend and I think that it is also the case for the vast majority of our fellow Americans who are aware of the sacrifice that the soldiers of the United States are making, as well as their relatives, friends, and communities.
For the majority of these returning veterans, just being able to survive the VA’s hurdles, and bureaucracy, the delays, the complexity of putting together the required elements to make your case plausible, is a huge struggle. It is made even worse by the fact that the veterans are asked to repeat “their story”, to explain their “problems” over and over, with all the consequences that one can imagine: the system is set up in such a way, that it is re-traumatizing them…
5) When you were filming, I know you became close with these returning veterans. Have you “lost” any friends from these groups? In other words, have there been any instances of some of the veterans whom you interviewed saying, “I can’t handle this” and, in an extreme case, committing suicide? Conversely, have you seen any signs of recovery in any individuals you, specifically, became acquainted with?
These friendships that we have built over the course of the past three years with veterans, are among the most inspiring, powerful and beautiful things that happened in my life. And I want to name them, they are my heroes: Wendy Barranco, Lisa Zepeda, David Brooks, Vinny Emanuele, Ryan Endicott, Jason Moon, Chris Arendt, Derek Giffin, Sergio Kochergin, but also my dear friends Jason Lemieux & Kevin Stendal, the veterans’ friends and relatives whom one should never forget when we talk about war-related psychological trauma: Eduardo Zepeda, Louis and Sylvia Casillas, Cecelia Hoffman, Paulina Brooks, Alejandro Villatoro, Aaron Hughes, Pete Sullivan, Hans Buwalda, Nikki Munguia, Sarah Dolens-Moon, Dylan Moon, Molly M. Taylor and of course the parents of Jeffrey M. Lucey, Joyce and Kevin, and his sister Debbie, who are playing a crucial role in the film.
The reason why I am mentioning these names is because when you ask about how the vets could “handle this” one can never forget the great men and women who are behind them: this is not an individual who is being deployed and then comes back to civilian life. For the reasons I mentioned earlier-the lack of institutional care, notably-the first in line who “cares” for the veteran is a husband, a wife, their children, a father, a mother, a brother, a sister, their friends, their neighbors, the overall society… They are the one who are, at first, exposed to the consequences of the war on a soldier’s soul. And when most of these exposures to the soldier’s tormented souls, occur in private, when the first “symptoms” or “crisis” erupt in the middle of the night, or during the Thanksgiving meal, or… on the 4th of July (you know why… the explosions…), I deeply think that it is not a fully “private” thing, on the contrary! We are all involved, concerned, and this is why I have put these animated “pictures” of mute, immobile veterans, looking straight into the camera lens, head on, at the end of the film: to give the viewers the idea that this is not a film that they are watching, that this is not for entertainment, but rather, that this story regards them, that the vets are watching them at the end, asking them questions.
It is still a source of astonishment to me, that they all gave 200% in the project, from the very beginning, and this is not “my” film, in a certain sense, or a film about “them”, but our film, a film about us in every sense of the term).
I really admire the courage that the veterans and their relatives and friends showed, to testify without a filter, straight, head on! I could not begin to tell you all the amazing stories behind the film (this would be another film), but for example, this fascinating singer, Jason Moon (http://www.jasonmoon.org/fr_home.cfm).
We filmed Jason in March. Around the middle of July, I received a long email from him. When you watch the film, you will know that Jason is, was, and has been extremely disturbed after his deployment to Iraq, to a point that was debilitating.
After he came back, Jason went through all kinds of phases, from the happiness of being back home, to hell. The only thing that he could still do from time to time was take his guitar, write songs, but even that, he could no longer do after a few months.
During this period, he wrote the most powerful, violent, sad and haunting songs I have heard in my life… (Jason had written a few songs upon his return from Iraq, in which he described the different phases of his PTSD, but was unable to “touch” those, because of the overwhelming emotional charge that was associated to those songs…I got this email in July: Jason explained that it had taken him eight long weeks to “recover” from the filming session (March), that he was starting to feel “better” and that he came out of the post-filming depression, wanting to finish writing his songs, and that new songs were pouring out of his soul, that he wanted to record an album. Not only had Jason been profoundly affected by our filming session, but he had been able to beautifully overcome, and come back stronger than before he was deployed! I was so impressed and proud of him… of us! Today Jason is performing every week, he has been invited to perform in all kinds of contexts, including at Walter Reed Army Hospital. I could mention similar stories of veterans who are doing much better today than when we first met three or four years ago. Not that the film has always necessarily played a role, but I think that it was the case for many of them: the sensation that they would touch other people’s minds, was indeed, very rewarding from them.
That’s why I also deeply hope that this film will reach people. This is not a selfish affirmation. This is our contribution. We want to change things. It’s urgent that we do so as a society.
Olivier Morel, Director of “On the Bridge”
South Bend, Indiana, October 7, 2011
[1] Again, read Aaron Glantz’s book in which he details all those cuts and the political justification that motivated them… op. cit., chapter 10, p. 118.