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| Sebastian Junger: 'I got out of war when Tim Hetherington died' | Sebastian Junger: 'I got out of war when Tim Hetherington died' |
| (2 months later) | |
| Early on in Sebastian Junger's film about his late friend, colleague and regular collaborator Tim Hetherington, there is an eerie shot, prosaic yet haunting. The camera pans jerkily across the back seat of a car, as the Bee Gees's How Deep Is Your Love blasts tinnily from the radio, and a caption tells us we are looking at Chris Hondros and Guy Martin. Those familiar with the circumstances of Hetherington's death during an assault on rebel forces in the Libyan city of Misrata in 2011 will be aware that Hondros was killed in the same attack, and Martin severely wounded. Hetherington, it becomes clear, shot this piece of film himself, and we can hear him mildly asking the driver: "Which way is the frontline from here?" – the accidental line of dialogue that gives Junger's documentary its resonant title. | Early on in Sebastian Junger's film about his late friend, colleague and regular collaborator Tim Hetherington, there is an eerie shot, prosaic yet haunting. The camera pans jerkily across the back seat of a car, as the Bee Gees's How Deep Is Your Love blasts tinnily from the radio, and a caption tells us we are looking at Chris Hondros and Guy Martin. Those familiar with the circumstances of Hetherington's death during an assault on rebel forces in the Libyan city of Misrata in 2011 will be aware that Hondros was killed in the same attack, and Martin severely wounded. Hetherington, it becomes clear, shot this piece of film himself, and we can hear him mildly asking the driver: "Which way is the frontline from here?" – the accidental line of dialogue that gives Junger's documentary its resonant title. |
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| Which Way Is the Front Line From Here is a moving memorial to Hetherington, only 40 when he died, after a brief but influential career as a war photographer that took in extensive periods covering the Liberian civil war and the Afghan conflict. Junger, who took Hetherington with him to Afghanistan on assignment for Vanity Fair, where they filmed the Oscar-nominated documentary Restrepo, says he wrestled with the best way to structure his film. | Which Way Is the Front Line From Here is a moving memorial to Hetherington, only 40 when he died, after a brief but influential career as a war photographer that took in extensive periods covering the Liberian civil war and the Afghan conflict. Junger, who took Hetherington with him to Afghanistan on assignment for Vanity Fair, where they filmed the Oscar-nominated documentary Restrepo, says he wrestled with the best way to structure his film. |
| "I wanted to bookend the film with what happened in Misrata. Because Tim died there, it seemed the only way to do it," says Junger. "You start with a point where you think something really bad is going to happen, then you go back and tell the life till you get back to that point. It seemed like a classic structure, and it would be the way I'd have done it in a book. The only mortifying thing was the song on the radio; lots of people think it was a musical choice on my part, but that's just what was playing." | "I wanted to bookend the film with what happened in Misrata. Because Tim died there, it seemed the only way to do it," says Junger. "You start with a point where you think something really bad is going to happen, then you go back and tell the life till you get back to that point. It seemed like a classic structure, and it would be the way I'd have done it in a book. The only mortifying thing was the song on the radio; lots of people think it was a musical choice on my part, but that's just what was playing." |
| Junger is of course best known as an award-winning writer, with a string of brilliant articles and books under his belt (The Perfect Storm, A Death in Belmont, War). But making a film about Hetherington, he says, was the best way to "enable people to appreciate and understand Tim's work", Junger was also reluctant to write such a book. | Junger is of course best known as an award-winning writer, with a string of brilliant articles and books under his belt (The Perfect Storm, A Death in Belmont, War). But making a film about Hetherington, he says, was the best way to "enable people to appreciate and understand Tim's work", Junger was also reluctant to write such a book. |
| "As soon as Tim died I decided once and for all to get out of war reporting for good," he says. "I've written about people's deaths my whole life one way or another, from The Perfect Storm onwards, and I just didn't want to spend three years in that kind of pocket again. I'm new to film-making, but I'm not new to storytelling; it's a very basic instinct and skill that does translate pretty well to different media." | "As soon as Tim died I decided once and for all to get out of war reporting for good," he says. "I've written about people's deaths my whole life one way or another, from The Perfect Storm onwards, and I just didn't want to spend three years in that kind of pocket again. I'm new to film-making, but I'm not new to storytelling; it's a very basic instinct and skill that does translate pretty well to different media." |
| It seems that 51-year-old Junger feels a sort of older-brother bond with Hetherington, in addition to the respect that one very able practitioner often affords another master of a different, but connected discipline. "Tim would think in very unconventional ways," he says. "He didn't make the mistake that almost everyone makes: to think that the most interesting thing about combat is combat itself. He realised, before I did almost, that combat was very repetitive, and extremely dramatic, but something that is dramatic isn't necessarily meaningful. Tim realised that some of the most meaningful things that were happening out there were quiet, were in the relationships between the men – quiet to the point of them being asleep." | It seems that 51-year-old Junger feels a sort of older-brother bond with Hetherington, in addition to the respect that one very able practitioner often affords another master of a different, but connected discipline. "Tim would think in very unconventional ways," he says. "He didn't make the mistake that almost everyone makes: to think that the most interesting thing about combat is combat itself. He realised, before I did almost, that combat was very repetitive, and extremely dramatic, but something that is dramatic isn't necessarily meaningful. Tim realised that some of the most meaningful things that were happening out there were quiet, were in the relationships between the men – quiet to the point of them being asleep." |
| Hetherington's most celebrated picture, which won the 2007 World Press Photo of the Year, of an exhausted American soldier came out of the trips that he took on Junger's assignment, but the older man clearly admires Hetherington's Sleeping Soldiers series even more. "You can see their youth and vulnerability. Part of the truth of war is that war is fought by children. American soldiers too, 18, 19 years old. He saw that when they were asleep." | Hetherington's most celebrated picture, which won the 2007 World Press Photo of the Year, of an exhausted American soldier came out of the trips that he took on Junger's assignment, but the older man clearly admires Hetherington's Sleeping Soldiers series even more. "You can see their youth and vulnerability. Part of the truth of war is that war is fought by children. American soldiers too, 18, 19 years old. He saw that when they were asleep." |
| Which Way is now Junger's second credit as director on a feature film, but Junger is not anxious to present this as a significant career change. "I'm a journalist," he says. "Documentary film is just a form of journalism. Magazine articles, documentaries, books – they all require the same level of experiencing honesty about events." Filming Restrepo, he says, "wasn't really very hard. Anyone can shoot video in a war zone, with a modern camera, you just put it on automatic settings. What was hard was organising the material later." | Which Way is now Junger's second credit as director on a feature film, but Junger is not anxious to present this as a significant career change. "I'm a journalist," he says. "Documentary film is just a form of journalism. Magazine articles, documentaries, books – they all require the same level of experiencing honesty about events." Filming Restrepo, he says, "wasn't really very hard. Anyone can shoot video in a war zone, with a modern camera, you just put it on automatic settings. What was hard was organising the material later." |
| In retrospect, though, Restrepo deserves to recognised as a landmark in digital-era multimedia cross-pollination. Having secured a commission from Vanity Fair to spend a year following a platoon of US troops in the heavily contested Korengal valley in north-eastern Afghanistan, with a unit "considered the tip of the spear for the American forces," Junger had the idea to film his time there from the beginning. The first photographer he took along didn't work out as he proved unable to shoot video as well as stills, and Hetherington came in as his replacement. As it turned out, they were rarely in the Korengal at the same time. Hetherington broke his leg at one point, while Junger ripped his achilles tendon, and was later "blown up". ("I wasn't really hurt," he says, "just rattled around in my head.") But their combined efforts produced a mass of footage that, edited down, told the soldiers' story with humanity and grace. Restrepo sits alongside Junger's articles, Hetherington's pictures, including the acclaimed book Infidel, and Junger's full-length narrative War. | In retrospect, though, Restrepo deserves to recognised as a landmark in digital-era multimedia cross-pollination. Having secured a commission from Vanity Fair to spend a year following a platoon of US troops in the heavily contested Korengal valley in north-eastern Afghanistan, with a unit "considered the tip of the spear for the American forces," Junger had the idea to film his time there from the beginning. The first photographer he took along didn't work out as he proved unable to shoot video as well as stills, and Hetherington came in as his replacement. As it turned out, they were rarely in the Korengal at the same time. Hetherington broke his leg at one point, while Junger ripped his achilles tendon, and was later "blown up". ("I wasn't really hurt," he says, "just rattled around in my head.") But their combined efforts produced a mass of footage that, edited down, told the soldiers' story with humanity and grace. Restrepo sits alongside Junger's articles, Hetherington's pictures, including the acclaimed book Infidel, and Junger's full-length narrative War. |
| That Restrepo ended up with an Oscar nomination seems a logical endpoint, but Which Way suggests that this helped to push Hetherington off on his fateful trip to Libya. "It was just a fun week, it felt a little silly. The Arab spring was rumbling away in the distance and so while we were at the Oscars, we made plans to cover it." Junger says they had another Vanity Fair assignment, to visit Bahrain, Egypt and Libya. "I said to Tim, we're not going near the frontline if there's active fighting. That's not what this article is about." Junger had to pull out of the Libyan trip at the last minute and the magazine killed the commission, but Hetherington went anyway. He had a project, says Junger, of taking portraits of the fighters in the way they thought they looked. If Which Way expresses any criticism of its subject, it's that Hetherington was perhaps a little reckless in his eagerness to stay close to the fighting. "Look," says Junger, "it doesn't mean if I had been there I wouldn't have done the same thing. People get sucked into the drama of it all. Tim was as susceptible to the drama of the frontline as anyone." | That Restrepo ended up with an Oscar nomination seems a logical endpoint, but Which Way suggests that this helped to push Hetherington off on his fateful trip to Libya. "It was just a fun week, it felt a little silly. The Arab spring was rumbling away in the distance and so while we were at the Oscars, we made plans to cover it." Junger says they had another Vanity Fair assignment, to visit Bahrain, Egypt and Libya. "I said to Tim, we're not going near the frontline if there's active fighting. That's not what this article is about." Junger had to pull out of the Libyan trip at the last minute and the magazine killed the commission, but Hetherington went anyway. He had a project, says Junger, of taking portraits of the fighters in the way they thought they looked. If Which Way expresses any criticism of its subject, it's that Hetherington was perhaps a little reckless in his eagerness to stay close to the fighting. "Look," says Junger, "it doesn't mean if I had been there I wouldn't have done the same thing. People get sucked into the drama of it all. Tim was as susceptible to the drama of the frontline as anyone." |
| Junger has had brushes with the movie business before. The Perfect Storm was filmed in 2000 in the high Hollywood manner with George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg ("I just cashed the cheque"), but documentary-making, he has found, carries its own set of difficulties. Restrepo carries its neutrality proudly, a sort of Hurt Locker of reality film. Junger believes that journalism and "advocacy" should be kept well clear of each other. This position has not made him popular in liberal, anti-war circles, but he is unrepentant. "Tim was particularly attuned to the idea that our job was to document the human consequences of war. Those consequences are borne by soldiers too. If you're going to be passionate about the victims of war, American soldiers are also victims of war. Tim understood that very deeply." | Junger has had brushes with the movie business before. The Perfect Storm was filmed in 2000 in the high Hollywood manner with George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg ("I just cashed the cheque"), but documentary-making, he has found, carries its own set of difficulties. Restrepo carries its neutrality proudly, a sort of Hurt Locker of reality film. Junger believes that journalism and "advocacy" should be kept well clear of each other. This position has not made him popular in liberal, anti-war circles, but he is unrepentant. "Tim was particularly attuned to the idea that our job was to document the human consequences of war. Those consequences are borne by soldiers too. If you're going to be passionate about the victims of war, American soldiers are also victims of war. Tim understood that very deeply." |
| • Which Way Is the Front Line from Here is released today. Tim Hetherington: You Never See Them Like This is at the Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool, until 24 November. | • Which Way Is the Front Line from Here is released today. Tim Hetherington: You Never See Them Like This is at the Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool, until 24 November. |
| • Tim Hetherington in Libya: witness to war – in pictures | • Tim Hetherington in Libya: witness to war – in pictures |
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