Power of Film

I mentioned the Big Sky documentary film festival going on in Missoula right now and I wanted to highlight one particular film that just pierced me to the heart. It documents a bicycle ride from one end of Vietnam to the other by a group of veterans from both sides of the war. Many are physically challenged, all have psychological wounds and a few have both. The emotional impact of all the sights and sounds and smells which had been buried in the sub-conscious plays out on these ex-soldiers as they travel north to south and it is wrenching to observe. Victims of PTSD and depression,alchoholism, and relationship issues, they wrestle with buried emotions and new revelations as they see this amazingly beautiful country and it's people in a whole new light.

I was eligible for the draft in 71 but fanagled my way out of it (moved to Europe for a few years and lived without an address) . I protested and argued and became "political" during those surreal times but I also developed an emotional reaction which arises, often to my surprise, when I am confronted with those types of scenes, guys recounting the trauma, describing their anguish, recounting the horror. Tears just start to flow from some deep place I cannot really explain.

That deep, unexplained hurt exists in the national soul as well, it seems to me, and is still causing all kinds of irrational behavior. Our nation is still unhealed from this deep gash and each citizen exists in his own form of PTSD. Some gained through direct experience , some got it passed down to them. Im glad someone is putting bike rides and the like together, and making great films about it as well, but we need an effort on a national scale to deal with all that pain and put it somehow behind us.

All faith is false, all faith is true
Truth is the shattered mirror strown
in myriad bits, while each believes
his little bit the whole to own. Sir Richard Burton