Armadillo

We couldn’t be too far from a reality-television show about the current wars. Every week our cast of soldiers confronts both the uncertain terrors of combat and the doldrums of downtime. The men would explain war’s emotional toll. We’d see firefights. It would all be packaged as a kind of stylized episodic entertainment centered on a digestible conceit like personality or closure. I can’t think of a feature-length documentary that has truly trivialized these wars by applying certain reality-show principles — by pushing personalities to the foreground, say. Many nonfiction films about the war in Afghanistan are more drawn to atmosphere and morality than personality or story. Thereness is often the movie’s biggest asset.