3/20/2024 0 Comments Sniping script tribal warsThe elder with unmatched eyes has a perspective our normal ones can never have. They take everything that we - and time - throws at them and carry on. But that's no match for that much older culture with its unfathomable ways of thinking, alien values, indecipherable loyalties, and the prime force and result of such a long history, resilience. We have the impressive technology that shrinks space and has unprecedented destructive capacity. The film's key insight is the humongous gap between that culture and ours. So if the dad-to-be dies, the abducted little Afghan girls are found among other caged children and released to what we would like to convince ourselves will be full, normal lives. It reminds us that the war does not erase normal human emotions, normal urges, and the hope for a future. If the affair seems implausible from the perspective of military rules (of engagement?), it serves a larger thematic purpose. Even a love affair breaks out, with the predictable hope and doom. These are Canadian soldiers we follow, not the usual American, so the unit has a consistency the tradition of the US Melting Pot eschewed. Yet in some ways this film is very different, fresh. Our wars always seem to be Our Culture against Them Savages. As the enemy sweeps out from the dunes they seem a force of nature attacking what we consider to be the agents of civilization - as the Indians attacked our settlers, the Axis our Allies, the Cong our forces in Nam. They face terrible attacks from a horde of unidentified insurgents. Our heroes are a small unit who endear themselves with their comradeship and humour. The sudden battle scenes are punctuated by throbbing local music, with the occasional reminder of our rock. This is an expertly made war film, in some ways typical of its genre. As the latter discovered, even the sand there is hostile. The mystique extends back far beyond the Canadian and American mission, back past the defeated Russians, even back beyond Alexander the Great. So that's where modern armies go to get confused and die. They have a large, eternal history, whereas we have our short history and technology. Hyena Road is about the gap between the modern Western understanding/army and the mystique of the ancient remote Afghanistan. The last line is the key, spoken by narrator (and writer, director, star) Paul Gross: "As the Afghans might say, 'You have the clocks, but we have the time.'" Might say, that is, but probably won't - they keep their secrets.
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