Retrograde – 7

Utterly remarkable footage of the last days of the Afghan war, embedded with American troops/advisers in Helmand Province, then with the Afghan forces after the Americans withdrew. The story wasn’t much, and there were perhaps too many scenes of soldiers looking at each other, talking on the phone, and just thinking; but the portrait it painted of the two forces was devastating: the Americans exuded competence, the Afghans were amateurs. You wondered what 19 years of American training had accomplished; or, conversely, what we were doing there at all. There was no discussion or explanation of why the Taliban were such superior fighters, or even what the war was about. And footage of the withdrawal itself–what a mess! As a scrapbook of a doomed war, this should be a keeper.