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- Army
Recruits Find Out How Much They Can Be
The New York Times,
By DANA STEVENS
January 27, 2005
Sarah Goodman's first feature-length documentary, "Army
of One," puts a bitterly ironic spin on the Army's best-known
recruiting slogan, "Be all that you can be." For the
three young recruits whose lives she documents over a period of
two years between basic training and deployment, the potential
represented by that "all" is severely limited by the
social, economic and psychological realities of their lives.
Only one of the three joins the Army for idealistic reasons:
middle-class, college-educated Thaddeus Ressler was working
on the floor of the Chicago Stock Exchange when he heard the
news on Sept. 11, 2001. He enlisted the following week, determined
to "make somebody pay." Nelson Reyes, from the projects
of the South Bronx, enters the military, which he calls "the
world's biggest gang," for a chance to escape his family
reputation for underachievement. Finally, Sara Miller is a modern-dance
major who enlists upon graduation from college in 2001, both
to avoid "working in a convenience store and being a loser"
and to gain respect from her distant and judgmental father.
The childlike Ms. Miller seems the least likely of the three
to survive the rigors of basic training; during an interview
about her possible deployment to Iraq, she cradles a teddy bear
in her lap. Yet it is she who most eagerly absorbs the lessons
of military culture. By the film's end, she has become a model
soldier, eagerly awaiting deployment to Iraq; Mr. Reyes has
gone AWOL and is hiding out in playgrounds of the South Bronx,
talking trash with his buddies; and Mr. Ressler, the most gung-ho
of the recruits, has become severely depressed and alcoholic.
In the film's most disturbing scene, Thaddeus and his buddies
swig liquor from a shared bottle and take turns whipping each
other in a sadomasochistic ritual born of sheer boredom.
"We find a brotherhood behind this," one participant
observes, "and it's disgusting, because we all know that
it's sick." In scenes like these, Ms. Goodman achieves
an almost shocking level of intimacy with her subjects, though
the editing of "Army of One" can at times feel as
unformed as the young people it documents.
"Army of One," which opened at the Two Boots Pioneer
Theater yesterday, is preceded by the short film "Qaeda
Quality Question Quickly Quickly Quiet," whose curious
title is explained by the film's premise. The artist and documentary
maker Lenka Clayton took President Bush's 2002 State of the
Union address (the "axis of evil" speech), chopped
it into its constituent 4,100 words, and arranged the results
in alphabetical order. The project is so simple as to constitute
a prank, but a result is a bracing piece of avant-garde agitprop
that provides an X-ray of American political oratory in the
wake of 9/11. The film is by turns sobering and funny, as unexpected
fragments of syntax emerge from the onslaught of words: "Always,
always, always, always, America," the president seems to
chant, before engaging in an accidental exhortation: "Let's,
liberate, liberty."
- The Village
Voice by
Laura Sinagra - January 25th, 2005
If you can handle the truth, Sarah Goodman's entropic doc
is as exquisite a basic training in banal U.S. Army culture as
you're likely to find.
Her premise following three New Yorkers enlisting after 9-11 had
good odds of capturing the kind of hell-is-war disillusionment
that Michael Moore employed to potboiling effect.
Instead, the paths of her subjects Sara Miller, a blankly directionless
dance major; Thaddeus Ressler, a stock-trading soldier of fortune;
and Nelson Reyes, a Bronx dropout provide insight into the military's
function as instant peer group, instant frat party, and instant
badge of integrity.
When asked about the looming invasion, Miller deliberates, "I'm
not all for war myself, but if I need to, I'll go. It's part of
being in the army."
Of course, when stateside drudgery leads Reyes to desert, and
the increasingly depressed Ressler to scourge his buff and willing
comrades with cat-o'-nine-tails, Miller's front-line deployment
seems like victory.
Goodman's fairly unsympathetic specimens also get ample chance
to display their reality show savvy. Though their panicky plights
are undeniably real, both Reyes and Ressler's somber yakking reveals
that penchant for Survivor speechifying so de rigueur in the reality-TV-based
community.
-
NYPOST.COM by By V.A. MUSETTO - January 26,
2005
ARMY OF ONE This is the Army.
Total running time: 90 minutes.
Not rated (mature subject matter).
At the Two Boots Pioneer Theater, Avenue A and Third Street, East
Village.
ANYONE thinking of en listing in the Army might want to take a
look at "Army of One," a compelling documentary by Canadian
Sarah Goodman.
It follows three idealistic young people who enlist in the
immediate aftermath of 9/11. For two of them, military life
doesn't live up to the hype.
Nelson, 19, a Puerto Rican from the South Bronx, joins to learn
a skill and "get respect."
He goes AWOL before finishing basic training.
Thaddeus, 22, a Chicago stockbroker, signs up because he wants
to avenge the WTC and Pentagon deaths.
He grows to hate Army life —which for him consists of
cleaning latrines and driving trucks — turning to booze
and even considering suicide.
The third recruit is Sara, 22, a North Carolina woman with
a pierced tongue who thinks her degree in modern dance is "a
waste or time and money."
She's the only one of the three to adapt to military life,
eager to be sent "over there."
Goodman doesn't preach or point fingers. She lets the three
recruits have their say, and allows viewers to make up their
own minds on the issues her film raises.
- Variety
Magazine Review by Ken Eisner - June 8, 2004
Military life can be experienced at a safe distance in "Army
of One," a riveting and timely new docu for which Canuck
picmakers were given generous access to U.S. military bases and
recruiting stations. Pic won the top Canadian feature prize at
the recent Top Docs festival in Toronto, and is heading into limited
Northland release before hitting beachheads in the U.S. Neutral
tone of verite production assures acceptance in regions both red
and blue.
Helmer Sarah Goodman, a recent Concordia graduate who previously
made award-winning shorts, here follows three lost-soul post-adolescents
wandering into the U.S. Army from very different walks of life.
The youngsters all have a vague urge to serve their country and
find themselves at the same time, or at least put a stop to whatever
they're currently doing.
If the most typical recruit is Nelson Reyes, a Puerto Rican kid
from the South Bronx who mainly wants to learn some skills and
wear a sharp uniform, the most unusual is Thaddeus Ressler, a
Chicago stockbroker who reacted viscerally to the 9/11 attacks,
making him want to quit his career and start over in a capacity
that would allow him to "make somebody pay." Sara Miller,
from North Carolina, wonders what to do with her degree in dance,
and how to live life in general.
As Goodman follows this trio from boot camp to base and back
home over the course of more than two years, there are ultimately
more questions raised than resolved; it would be nice to know
a little bit about why Sarah's gay-seeming dad seems to disapprove
of her gay-seeming lifestyle, but viewers are entirely dependent
on appearances in this non-narrated tale.
What's clear is that all three subjects have daddy issues. Thad,
the most thoroughly disillusioned, comes across as highly skeptical
of his liberal, toupee-sporting papa's half-hearted encouragement
to stick to "the noble thing" he's doing by staying
in the Army. That's even starker when Thad is shown getting drunk
with his Army buddies and they start whipping each other in a
homo-erotic frenzy.
Since lensing ended last fall, much has happened to the participants
(each gets caught up in the machinery knowing nothing whatsoever
about Iraq, even after the operation starts) and a brief update
will be appended for Canadian showings. Updated footage will be
added in time for any Stateside deployment. It's testimony to
this "Army's" raw power that one is left wanting more.
- Newsday
“Looking at who wins a horse race,
or a war.”
By Jan Stuart, Newsday, Arts and Entertainment, Oct 25th
Thaddeus Ressler left his job as a stock-options trader soon
after 9/11/2001 to join the Army, determined to ferret out and
kill Osama Bin Laden. When the United States went into Iraq
instead and he found himself driving trucks on a base in Georgia,
he finagled his way out, feeling betrayed and disgusted.
“You want to talk about terrorists?” said Ressler
this weekend at the Hamptons International Film Festival. “In
the army, you are in a mental prison that is really awful from
beginning to end.”
Ressler’s abbreviated military career is recorded in
Sarah Goodman’s “Army of One,” an arresting
festival entry that charts the recruitment, training and fate
of three very different individuals. Besides Ressler, it documents
a young man from the South Bronx (who went AWOL after three
weeks) and a young woman from North Carolina (who went the distance
to Iraq).
“I looked up a cult Web site,” said the outspoken,
25-year-old Ressler. “I went through the whole series
of things that define a cult: the mind control, the physical
control of the person’s body, the mental terror. The cults
encompassed everything from a football tem to an executive office.
That also includes the military.”
The filmmaker, a 31- year old Brooklyn resident, piped in.
“There are issues surrounding the cult of patriotism that
the film looks at,” said Goodman, “like Thadd’s
disillusionment, and what he came to realize. I think the rest
of the world is so puzzled by Americans and how perhaps we are
going to vote in this guy another time. What is it that makes
a nation of people do that? The military is an extreme example
of this patriotic culture. It’s a kind of developed culture
of ignorance.”
- Christian Science Monitor
Four Stars ****
Concise, humane documentary following three young people through
their early days as US Army recruits post-9/11. Contains truly
eye-opening moments.
- Film
Threat Review by James Wegg - June 22, 2004
“The idea of war can be glorious, but war isn’t,”
Nelson Reyes, November 2001 following the beginning of the U.S.
bombardment of Afghanistan.
“It would be cool to get a combat badge,” Sara Miller,
January 2003 waiting at Fort Bragg for deployment orders to
Iraq.
“The best Christmas present I ever had was getting out of
the U.S. Infantry on December 23,” Thaddeus Ressler, June
19, 2004.
"Army of One" should become required viewing for all
troubled youth, their uncertain parents, the military establishment
and their detractors or supporters.
Made on a shoestring budget, Sarah Goodman’s film follows
three idealistic young Americans from their decision to enlist
in the army through their struggle to survive boot camp all in
hopes of discovering themselves. They abandon the relative safety
of their own families for a much larger one that extols “one
set of values,” the mantra “we are beasts,” and
relentlessly drills in such useful facts as the best way of garrotting
a fellow human being is to “jab between the second and third
rib.”
Goodman’s approach is to stand back and let the recruits
tell their own stories. What could have turned out to be a propaganda
piece (either adulating the military or slamming it) soon places
the army into the background and brings the evil twins of slick
marketing and rudderless youth under the microscope.
Reyes joins the “world’s biggest gang … not just
to get out of the NYC neighbourhood,” but to gain the respect
and admiration of his parents and peers. When he returns in uniform
that has been pressed, polished and puffed up he hopes that its
sameness at the do-as-your-told barracks will make him stand out
in his private world. Initially, all is beautiful, put his hidden
personal demons send him AWOL and into an unstoppable downward
spiral that has yet to touch down.
Miller, supported by her constant companion Phuong, has trouble
keeping up with the guys, but perseveres and is voted squad leader
(“I’m not a born leader,” she remarks). Having
survived the ravages of her father’s seven-page caustic letter,
she seems to find comfort in the military and waxes philosophical
(with a cup or two of rationalization) about her chances if shipped
out to battle: “If you’re not meant to die today, you
won’t.”
At this moment, and many others, the superb team of Music and
Sound Supervisor Daniel Pellerin and Composers Mark Stewart and
Paul Watson underscore the unfolding human psychology with a score—particularly
the drums—that reflects the angst and dilemmas facing the
rookies as they journey.
Thaddeus grips our attention every time he’s on the screen.
At first, he’s in heaven, chanting with glee and eager to
put his budding rifle skills at the service of his country. Later,
when his hard work is rewarded with a truck driving assignment
and latrine cleaning duty, he finds solace in alcohol and—in
a scene that won’t fade away anytime soon—exchanging
and savouring a sever whipping with his buddy who wants to “refresh”
his fading welts from a previous beating (Proteus). Escaping tedium
through pain demonstrates the level of desperation in a way that
resonates when any act of torture is reported.
The mix of film and video camera work of Andy Bowley and Alexandra
Martinez Kondracke is wonderfully “close” to their subjects;
unforgettable is the night manoeuvre scene where the light’s
reflection through the eyes of the commanders creates an image
of vampires in battle gear preparing to pounce on their prey.
Throughout it all, there are voice-overs from the likes of U.S.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld or nameless lackeys whose
job it is to sell the military’s actions and, simultaneously,
instil the desire of America’s children to join its ranks.
The unsaid but felt irony could be easily expressed on both sides
of the U.S.-Canada border: imagine the results if as much energy
and resources were dedicated to enticing those of the age of majority
into polling stations rather than theatres of war. In this national
election year for both countries, cynicism, necessarily, runs
deep: those clinging to power would rather scare our youth into
fighting for the homeland, than voting out those who have ruined
it.
- "Toronto-born, New York-based filmmaker Sarah Goodman's
doc "Army of One" turns the tables as it follows three
young people who, in the wake of post 9-11 fervor, join the U.S.
armed forces. The army is not all they expected, however, and
all three experience some level of disillusionment -- one of them
goes AWOL and another even contemplates suicide. The film, which
was pitched last year at Hot Docs' Toronto Documentary Forum,
was eventually financed by the CBC, SBS Australia, IFC-Canada
and the BBC, took the festival's best Canadian feature award."
-Sarah Keenlyside, INDIEWIRE.com
View
the entire INDIEWIRE.com article.
- "Sarah Goodman's excellent entry has the economy and force
of good poetry and the momentum of good fiction. It captures two
years in the lives of three U.S. Army recruits, post-September
11. They're all young, confused, joining up for dumb-ass but perfectly
intelligible reasons. The transformations they undergo in basic
training follow the cold logic of tragedy, although Goodman's
style is so deftly understated you might not hear the cry of anguish
until days later, when scenes from the film are still floating
around in your head."
-Wendy Banks, NOW
Magazine.
- Read the Toronto
Star Review by Alex Bozikovic - June 19, 2004
- Vancouver Sun (to come)
- Westender (to come)
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