Brats: Our Journey Home (review)

For years dependent children of military personnel have been called brats by military and nonmilitary alike. Being an ex–military dependent myself, I have always referred to myself as a military brat whenever asked that awkward question, "Where are you from?" Donna Musil's 2005 documentary film Brats: Our Journey Home is a balanced and insightful investigation of the problems, joys, and pains of growing up in the military that should appeal to brats and their friends and families, as well as anyone interested in military family life.

This categorical documentary breaks military dependent life into sections that are loosely based on topics relevant to the brat lifestyle. Each section consists of archival and amateur footage of families living on U.S. military bases, interviews with military dependents, and testimony by experts such as retired general and former brat Norman Schwartzkopf, who speaks about his family's experiences during his father's military career in several insightful interviews. For viewers unfamiliar with the problems of brat life, Musil has interspersed scenes from Lewis John Carlino's 1979 film The Great Santini, which is based on Pat Conroy's fictionalized novel of a gung-ho Marine father who is both loving and abusive to his children. The film is narrated by Kris Kristofferson, a brat himself, and eight of his songs are featured on the soundtrack.

Brats: Our Journey Home is Donna Musil's directorial debut and the result of seven years of work. Musil brings a great deal of credibility to the project, because she is also a brat. She says the film was inspired by her sense of feeling different from other Americans due to her military upbringing. The film's Web site (http://www.bratsourjourneyhome.com) nicely augments the documentary, featuring information about the movie and links to other Web sites that provide assistance to struggling military brats and help them connect with other brats.

For the most part Brats presents an objective overview of brat life that balances the positive aspects with the often debilitating social and psychological problems confronting many who grow up as military dependents. For example, the film covers such positive issues as military prohibitions against racism, the safety of military bases, cultural diversity, the relatively high level of education in military schools, and the accessibility of school teams and clubs. The film also focuses on the downside of brat life via interviewees who highlight the peculiarities of military life and their struggles to fit into mainstream American society after they were no longer dependents.

Two early sequences in the film set its tone and highlight its strengths and weaknesses. After a voiceover introduction by Kristofferson and several brief but interesting glimpses from archival photos and home movies, the film presents two fundamental problems facing brats: the lack of a specific place to call home and the fact that they are of secondary importance to their parents' military service. The documentary uses the term "narcissistic family" to explain the phenomenon in which the needs of the children are often sacrificed for those of their parents. Stephanie Donaldson-Pressman, a clinical psychotherapist specializing in military families, suggests in an interview that brats experience a similar phenomenon to that of families where poverty or drug abuse places the parent's needs above that of the children. In both situations, the parents become very self-involved. In the brats' case, the significance of the parents' military service supersedes the importance of the children's requirements. However, moments after establishing this theme, the film quickly moves to more positive aspects of military dependency without probing this emotional issue more deeply. Any possible discussion of the impact that living in narcissistic families on these brats is passed over when Kristofferson states in a voiceover, "of course no two military families are identical." Although Kristofferson's comment is true, it downplays the issue just established in the preceding sequence. Thus, Brats first establishes the importance of understanding the military family as narcissistic only to argue, via Kristofferson's narration, that such situations...