The Iraq War remains, as one US soldier puts it, a “clusterfuck”: a gargantuan mess on a humanitarian scale, from which the world has not yet recovered..
Sand castle ( 2017 ) is a inhouse Netflix movie. The traditional Jews moghul of Hollywood did not get a chance to screw up a movie using Jews.. This was Brazilian director Fernando Coimbra’s second film and he breaks the film direction barrier ..
This movie is for the intelligentsia , like the “Thin Red line”. War just sucks - even if it is, at times, necessary. The Thin Red Line has done a pretty good job of letting us know this.
Sand Castle is another entry into this category. .
Sand Castle is another entry into this category. .
Below: True redemption happens when guilt ( judged by own conscience --not by someone at the pearly gates or hour of judgement ) leads to good.
The movie has got poor reviews from the intellectually numb movie critics, who cant think for nuts leave alone figure out the paradox of war ..
Private Matt Ocre joins the brutal war in Iraq reluctantly and leaves it more reluctantly— such is the paradox of war.. You can crawl though a creek of shit and come out clean on the other side..
Sand castle is a cut above the rest of the war genre films . It is well directed and the film avoids cliches and stereotypes .
This is a true story..
Chris Roessner’s screenplay is inspired by his own machine gunner experiences in the Iraq War.. . Ocre’s character is the mouthpiece for the film’s screenwriter Roessner
Chris Roessner’s screenplay is inspired by his own machine gunner experiences in the Iraq War.. . Ocre’s character is the mouthpiece for the film’s screenwriter Roessner
Roessner, had signed up to the Army Reserves two months before 9/11, never expecting to actually have to go to a brutal war
Sand castle is Roessner’s penance, the demons he had to exorcise to be able to look at himself in the mirror again. His script isn’t about manufacturing distinct lines between good and bad as much as it is depicting the gray in-between for the thinkers ( leave stupid Hollywood film critics out of this group )..
The mise-en-scène is realistic , elegant and gut wrenching .. The character Ocre’s individual journey from the start of the film to the end is engrossing.
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Sand Castle looks beyond the mundane action and instead focuses upon raw human character.. .
Nicholas Hoult ( Mad Max: Fury Road ) is Matt Ocre, a young gun shy reservist who joined up for the college money. Enlisting runs in his family.
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In the wake of the events of September 11, 2001, the United States no longer retains a "peacetime" army, and Matt Ocre finds himself a soldier at war
In the wake of the events of September 11, 2001, the United States no longer retains a "peacetime" army, and Matt Ocre finds himself a soldier at war
When he’s shipped overseas to Iraq , Ocre is rattled by the environment, and intimidated by the rallying matra of the gung ho, “Proud and Ready” GIs he’s assigned to.
Ocre is a sensitive and reticent individual . He cant mesh with the weight room of alpha male testosterone-laden meatheads..
“I don’t belong here,” Private Ocre says in voice-over, “and I’m ashamed.”
Overwhelmed by internal turmoil , with the knot of dread in his stomach pit , he promptly busts his own hand repeatedly in a Humvee door, a self-inflicted injury .
He aint ready for this shit , he is done, and he wants out..
He aint ready for this shit , he is done, and he wants out..
His unit now looks at him as the yellow belly looking to escape. His commanding officer knows his hand fracture was self inflicted and as such watch him closely.
Ocre is asked again and again by his team mates “You up for this?”
Ocre is asked again and again by his team mates “You up for this?”
Brusquely is informed by his army doctor that a broken hand is no impediment to combat, Ocre is now resigned to match the gung-ho mood of his unit.
You see, signing on the dotted line made him the property of the US Army and there’s no getting around it. He must follow orders and enter the hellfire.
Ocre and his unit wastes no fuckin' time in efficiently ‘liberating’ Baghdad, and enjoying the spoils of the supposed victors like sleeping on Saddam's bed .
But they’re soon faced with the consequences of their actions in an merciless arena where traditional rules of engagement don’t apply.
Sand Castle becomes an allegory for shameless and dishonorable U.S. foreign policy.. making moolah by “clearing the mess we made”..
Motivations have been in question since the very first United States soldier set foot on Iraqi soil based on the lie of President Bush “ Iraq has weapons of mass destruction” . Sand Castle does nothing to sway such a narrative.
Three months after an intense firefight that ends with an Apache helicopter producing American-brand exceptional devastation, Ocre and his small team are sent to a small remote Iraqi town called Baqubah.
Ocre’s unit is tasked with repairing a water pumping station deliberately damaged by the Americans in a bombing raid .
The station is the only source of water for an isolated village. Its people are desperate and dying of thirst.
We watch Ocre become the lone voice amongst dissenters to approach the Iraqi community and seek their assistance.
Understaffed, the army calls upon the villagers to help with the almost-impossible task. No one answers the call -- they're afraid for their lives. Any help given to the Americans would be seen as aiding the enemy.
Of course, the station needs fixing because the U.S. forces bombed it. Some unseen forces don’t want the American soldiers anywhere near the water pumping station or distributing water to desperate people by lorries.
The young soldiers do their best, an almost Sisyphean task riddled by cultural barriers, suspicions, resentment and danger . . Frustration fizzes on both sides, and how!
It's only when a courageous teacher assembles a group of scared but willing townspeople that real progress begins. But, as the saying goes, "no good deed goes unpunished."
The hidden enemy attacks... first their own people, then a savage battle of attrition with the American troops.
We get to see two vastly different cultures , where the Americans are judged by their sensitivity and honorable responsiveness to the needs of the Iraqi people, the Iraqis are appraised only by their lack of character , unwillingness to be in partnership with white devils .
Never mind hey have no water to drink leave along rinse menses blood off twats..
Unwittingly perhaps, Sand Castle reveals itself not as a paean to cross-cultural collaboration, but as a microcosm of America’s foreign policy in the Middle East: Blow things up, blame others when fixing them goes wrong, and move on to the next stop without looking back.
The U.S. contingent working in Baqubah keep preaching to the influential locals that they are there to help. They wonder why they cannot garner citizen assistance and cooperation. Well, you bombed their nation with force and now overrun their homeland on a high horse of righteousness?
A Iraqi sheikh explains to the soldiers that while the U.S. may run the show in town during the day, they don't control the night, and any of the locals who help the American forces will wind up in dire trouble. We get to see what this means as a teacher who cooperated was strung up and burnt alive at night outside his school .
“They’ll greet us as liberators” written by embedded media , quickly turns into a shit sandwich - nay - shit on toast , with ill-equipped and frightened soldiers stuck in the middle.
The water effort fails spectacularly. The potential photo op featuring soldiers bringing water back to a village full of thankful Iraqi citizens was not to be . . This movie gives us a microcosm of everything wrong with American foreign policy
Ocre’s unit is recalled.
DESTROYING WATER INFRASTRUCTURE WAS A HEGELIAN DIALECTIC TO GET PRIVATE KOSHER MILITARY CONTRACTORS INTO IRAQ AFTER THE WAR. ..
LATER THE WORLD WOULD SEE THAT 6625 PRIVATE KOSHER CONTRACTORS MILKED WAR TORN IRAQ WITH US VICE PRESIDENT JEW DICK CHENEY , A DEEP STATE AGENT, MAKING MAXIMUM MOOLAH.
THE DUMB US SOLDIERS TRYING TO RESTORE WATER SUPPLY WERE SHOT AT BY JEWISH FUNDED ARAB NON-IRAQI MERCENARIES.
THIS WAS NO SUNNI-SHIA IRAQI IRAQI CITIZEN RIFT..
Ocre is sent home..
His superiors see that Ocre has started dry brushing his teeth and dry wiping his face in the barracks. He wont waste water , when the Iraqis villagers in the desert are dying of thirst..
We get to see defaced Saddam’s palaces, used as barracks where dirt-seamed American soldiers lounge on showroom-style furniture and sleep on gilded beds.
Ocre discovers, in an atmosphere where resentment and anger fester, trying to win the hearts and minds of the locals is a thankless task fraught with danger. It’s here, in the streets, squares and schools that he discovers the true cost of war..
Ocre know that everything the Americans are doing is basically a virtual Band-Aid.
Men and women on both sides are dying for something that may not be possible beyond optimistic fantasy.
By the end of the film, Ocre still can’t look at himself in the mirror or take a bath without feeling ashamed.. He is ashamed that US soldiers are swimming merrily in the luxurious pools of Saddam's palaces..
On Ocre’s way back home he notices that a grand sofa in Saddam’s palace with a broken leg is still in the same place and condition ..
That said it all!
Indeed , director Coimbra gives a peek into war’s infinite complexities.. War isn’t always about defeating an enemy or freeing prisoners..
TO BE CONTINUED ..
BELOW: WE ASK PM MODI , WHY HAS SARDAR SAROVAR DAM BEEN ALLOWED TO OVERFILL , FLOODING LAND UPSTREAM AND CAUSING LOSS OF LIFE ?
DOWNSTREAM OF THE DAM, GUJARATI PEOPLE HAVE NEVER EVER SEEN SUCH MASSIVE DESTRUCTIVE NARMADA RIVER FLOW..
WHY IS GUJARAT GOVT , CENSORING MEDIA?
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CAPT AJIT VADAKAYIL
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