Film

Body of War (2007)

Director: Phil Donahue, Ellen Spiro

Movie review

From Time Out Chicago

Surprisingly, powerfully spare, Body of War indicts the war by showing what the Bush administration would rather have you not see—namely, the body of a wounded soldier. Impressively limited in scope (albeit scored to mopey Eddie Vedder ballads), the film focuses on Kansas City, Missouri, native Tomas Young, who served less than a week in Iraq before a shot to the spine paralyzed him from the chest down. The film follows his Ron Kovic–like transformation to antiwar activist—a position lent ballast by the fact that Young’s brother quickly ships off to war. The movie also chronicles Young’s marriage to the apparently saintly waitress Brie, which survives physiological hurdles but nevertheless seems doomed from the start.

Spiro and first-time auteur Donahue periodically cut to a recitation of the Senate’s votes to authorize the war, and each “yea” takes on a chilling, incantatory quality; more than anything else, the movie is a searing call for accountability. The filmmakers position Robert Byrd as their de facto hero, and a slightly sanctimonious closing scene finds the senator and Young reading the names of the senators who voted nay. But in its modest, relentless focus on Young’s everyday physical and emotional hardships, Body of War makes the broader toll of the war quite plain.