Occupation: Dreamland

"An uncensored look at the war on the ground"

Well, I have to say that watching this film was a bit boring for me. I find many documentaries seem to move so slowly that the overwhelming boredom felt in watching them overpowers the significance and meaning of the content itself. I found this to be the case with this film. Nearly nothing seemed to happen for the first half of the movie, which was a huge letdown as I was expecting to watch our Army battling it out in Fallujah of all places, one of Iraq's most tumultuous areas...

Where was all the action? Instead of guns blazing and bombs exploding, I was sitting around watching interview after interview of American soldiers. These candid interviews of the Army's 82nd Airborne provided each man(soldier) with a platform to express his own insight and point of view as to what was really going on in the area. Open discussions regarding the state of the war, whether we should be there, personal reasons for being there, re-enlistment, recruitment, were the opposite of what I was expecting, and I was pretty bored. What I realized by the end of the movie is that the pervasive boredom I was experiencing while watching this movie perfectly reflected the bored reality these soldiers were facing in the barracks each day and night.

After getting through the interviews, however, we begin to see more action footage of night operations, civilian suspects being taken as prisoners, and overall an unprecedented glimpse into the violence, chaos, confusion, despair, destruction, and pain of war itself. We also get a sense for what this all looks like when the cameras aren't running. But once again we end up back in the barracks with confused debriefings, mindless chatter, and many other boredom-inducing scenarios.

Overall, the most valuable and fulfilling parts of this film for me were found in the discussions between the citizens of Fallujah and the occupying soldiers. Through the help of a translator, we begin to see a point of view of the Iraqi citzen, a viewpoint rarely expressed through conventional media. Operation Dreamland is powerful in that it gives both sides of the Iraq war-story a voice and venue to be expressed.

The movie is well made, with minimal post-production and offers a look into a war most of us never see. This film provides us with a realistic view into the minds of those who fight this war.