WP: 'Baghdad ER': Saluting Valor On the Medical Front Lines
By Tom Shales
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 20, 2006; Page C01
To read political motives into "Baghdad ER," a poignant and powerful documentary about military medical personnel working in Iraq, would be to insult and diminish not only the film but also its subjects. Even so, the right wing has started flapping already, and the Pentagon reputedly finds the movie worrisome.
Truth is always worrisome to those with vested interests. Those who would denigrate the film -- which is a lesson in humanity, not politics -- presumably have chosen to ignore the printed prologue on the screen: "This film is a tribute to the heroism and sacrifice of the soldiers who are the patients and staff of the 86th Combat Support Hospital" -- men and women working feverishly and around the clock to put wounded soldiers back together amid the horror of a bedeviling war.
"Baghdad ER," premiering tomorrow night on HBO (with a timely encore on Memorial Day at 10 p.m.), deals far more in actions than in words -- the sometimes desperate actions of medical personnel who repair wounds, alleviate suffering and try to restore the spirits of soldiers who arrive in the hospital with bodies riddled by shrapnel or with severely mangled limbs....
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HBO leaked a print of the film to an op-ed pundit who wrote about it weeks ago and noted that it was neither pro-war nor antiwar. It sets one to wondering: What kind of documentary filmmaker of measurable sanity would set out to make a pro-war movie? Haven't the lunacy and inefficiency of war been fairly well established after all these centuries?...
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"Baghdad ER," which brings the war home more painfully than perhaps any other film has done, or tried to do, is sheer, if bitter, brilliance.
(Baghdad ER (60 minutes) airs Sunday night at 8 on HBO.)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/19/AR2006051901984.html