Father Sol­dier Son

There’s a corol­lary to Truffaut’s old adage about no war movie being able to depict the hell of bat­tle with­out inad­ver­tent­ly glo­ri­fy­ing it; no film about what awaits sol­diers at home can depict the proud nobil­i­ty of their ser­vice with­out expos­ing the scream­ing hel­la­cious tor­ment that under­girds it.

Leslye Davis and Catrin Einhorn’s fea­ture debut Father Sol­dier Son is an odd doc­u­men­tary spec­i­men: an attempt to make a stance­less, apo­lit­i­cal por­trait of the mod­ern-day vet­er­an. There’s noth­ing in here that runs the risk of feath­er-ruf­fling to either side of the aisle, a lack of sub­stance dis­guis­ing itself in a human­ist per­spec­tive. We’re here to focus on Sgt. First Class Bri­an Eisch and his assort­ed tribu­la­tions, the film­mak­ers’ eli­sions sug­gest, not to con­sid­er any of the fac­tors that have brought him and count­less oth­ers like him to this junc­ture. In tak­ing great inter­est in symp­toms and zero inter­est in their caus­es, they weak­en their the­sis about inter­gen­er­a­tional pat­terns of destruc­tive masculinity.

The film cov­ers one decade in the life of Eisch and his fam­i­ly, a peri­od of time begin­ning with his deploy­ment to Afghanistan and an in-the-field injury that sends him home for good. He tries to tough it out, in keep­ing with his man-up-and-mus­cle-through approach to every facet of life, but even­tu­al­ly he accepts that ampu­ta­tion is the only option. From there, it’s all down­hill as he los­es per­son­al agency and gains weight, his upbeat dis­po­si­tion giv­ing way to irri­tabil­i­ty and impa­tience. He spends all his time play­ing first-per­son shoot­er video games, sinks into depres­sion, and snaps at things that nev­er both­ered him before.

Around him, every­thing moves onward. He gains a wife and a pros­the­sis, and los­es some­thing of great val­ue best left undis­closed here. His rela­tion­ship to his two sons, teen Isaac and ram­bunc­tious grade-school­er Joey, illus­trates the most point­ed com­ment the direc­tors have to make. He per­pet­u­ates tox­ic par­a­digms of man­li­ness to his boys, the same emo­tion­al stunt­ed­ness that keeps him ded­i­cat­ed to an insti­tu­tion that has effec­tive­ly ruined his life.

He screams at lit­tle Joey to bear down and win dur­ing a pee­wee wrestling match, and lat­er on, the kid dis­cuss­es a chill­ing desire to go over­seas and kill the men who hurt his father like it’s one of TV’s darnedest things. Old­er Isaac wants to make some­thing out of him­self and go to col­lege like his father nev­er did. Dad bets him $400 he won’t make it to grad­u­a­tion day, and that he’ll sign recruit­ment papers with­in a year.

When he’s ulti­mate­ly proven right and Isaac suc­cumbs to the lack of oppor­tu­ni­ty afford­ed him in his rur­al cor­ner of upstate New York, the film doesn’t treat the young man’s enlist­ment as a hor­ri­fy­ing cul­mi­na­tion of hope­less­ness. The mil­i­tary unveil­ing cer­e­mo­ny for new recruits looks like an Imag­ine Drag­ons music video, and the direc­tors go right along with the faint sense of patri­o­tism. The film inspires tremen­dous empa­thy for the many chal­lenges fac­ing Eisch, from the phys­i­cal obsta­cles with his leg to the inabil­i­ty to con­nect to civil­ians at home, but noth­ing sug­gests that the Army may be at fault for the sor­ry state of affairs.

A vis­it to the VA cen­ter goes too smooth­ly, with edits hus­tling through the mil­i­tary get­ting Eisch all tak­en care of. The ques­tion­able valid­i­ty and util­i­ty of the war on ter­ror go unre­marked upon, save one sound­bite in which Eisch remarks that he doesn’t think much about that beyond the age-old clash between the good guys (us, pre­sum­ably) and the bad guys (them). The edits skate right over the 2016 elec­tion, pre­sum­ably because a wide swath of view­ers would lose a lot of sym­pa­thy for this man if we heard his opin­ions about Trump.

The sum­ma­tion of Eisch’s expe­ri­ences feels glar­ing­ly incom­plete, even as it faith­ful­ly con­veys the inte­ri­or­i­ty of his strug­gle. Put sim­ply, there’s no point in gen­er­at­ing this much com­pas­sion for vet­er­ans if there’s no will­ing­ness to engage with the ques­tion of what’s to be done with it.