Breaking Ranks (review)

Breaking Ranks is an advocacy documentary, promoting the cause of American military deserters seeking permanent refuge in Canada. The film weaves together portraits of four deserters, in each case using talking-head interviews as the anchor for brief forays into the backgrounds of each soldier. The film also includes brief b-roll sequences from the combat zone, intended to illustrate points made by the soldiers as they explain why they deserted. For all four––three privates and a private first class––their reasons lie in a belief that the United States was wrong to invade Iraq and is doing great harm there. The film includes an extended portrait of a Canadian lawyer, an American expatriate who had fled to Canada during the Vietnam War and is now working on behalf of current deserters. There are a few briefer scenes showing the deserters interacting with Canadian host families, being interviewed on a radio show, appearing at anti-war rallies, and interacting among themselves. Peppered throughout the film are shots of posters and banners announcing "War Resisters Welcome Here," and the final end-credit invites viewers to find "more information on the war resisters" on a dedicated resisters' website.

The film does not argue that the Iraq war is immoral; it takes that as a given. Its central goal is to persuade Canadians that their government should welcome deserters from this war. The film has two interesting arguments available to it. One is that in its recent past—during the Vietnam War––Canada publicly welcomed American draft-dodgers, tens of thousands of whom fled to Canada. The film includes a news clip of Premiere Pierre Trudeau, in the late 1960s, declaring, "Canada should be a refuge from militarism," and the quote appears on a t-shirt for sale at a rally. The second argument, although not so clearly stated, is that Canada should not be afraid to dissent from what it considers to be wrongheaded or immoral American policies, and that providing a refuge for deserters (another term the film prefers to avoid) is a meaningful and even morally obligatory way to demonstrate independence.

On this latter point, the film has an interesting lineage. It was co-produced by the National Film Board of Canada (NFB), which in the late 1960s began to issue the occasional film dissenting from and, later, denouncing United States' policies. One of the first to do so, and one most pertinent to Breaking Ranks, was a documentary about Vietnam, Sad Song of Yellow Skin (1970), directed by Michael Rubbo. Until this film was made, NFB documentary projects had to include "Canadian content," and although Rubbo and his crew initially went to Vietnam with the intention to film some Canadian project there, the resulting film had no Canadian content at all. It examined the brutal and debasing effects of the war on the culture and people of Saigon, through intermediary portraits of three young American journalist/volunteers working to ameliorate conditions where they could and sending news stories back to the United States. The film's release was briefly in question because of its anti-war (and therefore arguably anti-American) stance and its lack of Canadian content, but the notion that Canada had a right and duty to comment on world issues regardless of Canadian content arose and prevailed.

A further link exists between the Vietnam-based commentary in Sad Song of Yellow Skin and Breaking Ranks. The latter's director, Michelle Mason, has made one previous film, The Friendship Village (2002), which is about an American war veteran's efforts to help establish a facility in Vietnam dedicated to treating children suffering from maladies believed to result from exposure to Agent Orange.

Mason's two films, however, compare unfavorably to Sad Song of Yellow Skin. Sad Song of Yellow Skin is as cinematic as a documentary can be, rich in emotionally powerful and challenging, surprising, unexpected material. While The Friendship Village and Breaking Ranks include heart-rending shots of suffering children, the children are...