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Director Matthew Heineman latest documentary captures the
final months of the 20 year long war in Afghanistan. The film begins by covering the story of a
group of Green Berets supporting the Afghan National Army. Once they are
ordered to pull out, an operation referred to as "retrograde,"
Heineman then focuses the film on a young Afghan general, General Sami
Sadat, who is fighting desperately to protect his country from a Taliban
takeover.
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Produced by National Geographic and launched at Telluride
and nominated for Best Political Documentary at the Critics’ Choice Documentary
Awards, it won the Producing Award at DOC NYC Feature and is on the longlist
for an Oscar nom.
In military parlance, the term retrograde can mean
several things, among them withdrawal from a war zone, but the ambiguity of the
title is calculated.
“It's a historical document of this final chapter in the war
in Afghanistan,” the director tells
Salon. “It's also an allegorical tale for a dynamic that has happened
throughout history and will continue to happen long in the future: going into a
country to fight a war, then leaving the country, and the effect that process
has on everyone involved.”
Heineman is known for his Oscar-nominated doc Cartel Land
and his narrative feature A Private War.
He has also made docs about ISIS in Syria, the opiate epidemic and human
trafficking. Each time, he explains, “I try to take this large complex subject
that has already been framed by news headlines and stats and humanize it. I try
to put a human face to it. And that's certainly what I try to do with Retrograde."
The intimacy and access in Retrograde resulted
from a tenacious effort to embed with U.S. Army Special Forces, better known as
the Green Berets. The access was enabled by producing partner, Caitlin McNally
but even then the process took years to be approved by the Pentagon.
By the time that happened, America was preparing to exit
Afghanistan. Two months after the film crew landed in Afghanistan, President
Biden pulled out the troops.
Heineman didn’t know what to do. “I have no film here,” he
related to IndieWire. “We’d been shooting for two months, and there’s no
real arc to what’s happening.”
“It wasn’t a fait accompli that the Afghans were going to
lose to the Taliban at that point, so there was a sort of blank of where this
story was going to go,” he told Stephen Sato
at Moveable Feast.
The filmmakers decided that Afghan General Sadat could
emerge as a central character, and he agreed to cooperate. “We completely
pivoted the film to focus on him and look at the end of the war through his
eyes,” Heineman
said.
The film vividly conveys the feelings of the Green Berets
and their Afghan allies after President Biden’s announcement.
“There’s a scene in the film where they tell their Afghan
counterparts that they’re leaving,” Heineman tells Deadline.
“It’s quite a poignant scene where their faces all say more than words can ever
say. That motif of faces was something that was very purposeful in the shooting
of the film and the cutting of the film, really holding on faces for a really
long time.”
He could have created a series: Heineman returned to the
editing room with 1,300 hours of footage. Instead, he edited the story to 94
taut minutes.
He adds to Salon, “In interviews, people can lie, either
because they're nervous or they want to spin a narrative. But faces don't lie.
That explains the motif that we developed both in the field and also in the
editing room of holding on faces for a really long time.”
Some critics have noted that the film looks slick, with a
sheen and a composition that wouldn’t look out of place, in say, Ridley Scott’s
Black Hawk Down.
Peter Debruge in
Variety for example notes, that Heinman “brings back hi-def vérité footage
that looks sharper and more artfully framed than most Hollywood features.
“Am I supposed to not hone my craft and grow as an artist?”
Heinman responds to Salon. “To me, the aesthetics are really important. My goal
always at every step along the way, is I want you to feel what it's like to be
in the control room as you're calling in an airstrike or drone strike. I want
you to feel like what it's like to be in a Blackhawk helicopter as rockets are
being shot at you. I want you to feel what it's like to go to the front lines
of a war zone as your country is crumbling and there's a lack of communication
and information.”
Heinman put himself in some life threatening situations but
denies being an adrenaline junkie. “I’m not drawn to the danger,” he tells
IndieWire. “I’m drawn to people who have big stakes. I don’t enjoy being shot
at.. I guess I am drawn, but I’m not quite sure exactly why.”
He recounted the filming of a scene where he’s backseat in a
helicopter in a particularly dangerous area. The Taliban began firing. He tells Dano Nissen, “When you’re in the
helicopter and rockets are being shot at you there is no object button. There
is no I want to go home. You are there. You’re in it.”
He continued, “In those situations the only thing I have
agency over is my camera. And that is what I choose to focus on. I focus on
framing and exposure. I’m mixing sound when I’m filming. Those are things I can
control. If I’m going to risk my life to get a scene I’m going to get it
right.”
Accompanying Heineman were veteran combat cinematographers
Timothy Grucza and Olivier Sarbil, supported by field producers and translators
but scene depicting the chaotic and hazardous exodus from Kabul airport was
just Grucza and Heinman alone.
“Never in my career have I ever felt something as strong as
what I felt being at the Abbey Gate as thousands of Afghan civilians were
desperately trying to flee, and as 18-year-old Marines, who weren’t even alive
during 911, were making these impossible ‘Sophie’s Choice’ decisions on who to
let in and who not to,” he relates.
“The Taliban was watching at gunpoint a hundred yards away, as ISIS was
circling around us in suicide vests, waiting to attack, which happened 12 hours
later in that very spot. All I could think about was, “What have we done here?”
Of course, he could escape with his American passport back
home to NYC. He understands the privilege of his circumstance and the
responsibility that comes with it.
“On one level, I think the film is a historical record of
this turning point in history, but it’s also an attempt to get people to care
and feel just a little bit more and understand this conflict in a way they
might not have otherwise.”
To Salon, he adds, “I think the film is a living, breathing document of the massive chasm between the ideological reasons for going to war and the reality of those who are actually fighting it in real time.”
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