Two Grads Make War Personal in ‘Homecoming’

“Operation Homecoming” takes an unconventional approach to the tradition of wartime documentaries. It’s not a political polemic opposing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan­—it’s personal.

The film stems from a project, created by the National Endowment for the Arts in 2004, which called for writings about the war experience in Iraq and Afghanistan from soldiers and their families. The effort also held writing workshops in military camps led by such distinguished authors as Tobias Wolff and Bobbie Ann Mason. Over 100 pages were sent in to the project, from which a book and the documentary were created.

And behind the scenes, a contingent of Harvard grads have been bringing these stories to the limelight.

IN THE KNOW

“There’s something about the immediacy and intimacy about the way people write that you can’t get in any interview,” says Richard Robbins ’91 in a phone interview with The Crimson.

Executive producer Tom Yellin ’75 and director-producer Robbins are part of The Documentary Group, the production company behind “Operation Homecoming.”

Robbins and Yellin are veterans of the broadcast journalism field and were colleagues with Peter Jennings. The three shared a desire to create films that reached beyond the constraints of broadcast journalism.

“All of us having served in war zones in general, there was a way that, firsthand, those sort of experiences are actually more profound than politics,” Robbins says.

The cinematic re-creations of the featured writings do not simply show stoic-faced soldiers reading letters home. Instead, the writings vary from poetry and fiction to memoirs and essays, with the accompanying visuals stylized to match the tone and form of the writer, including animation, still photographs, and slow motion video.

“We were really just trying to create an aesthetic for each piece that felt like a companion to the way the soldiers would write,” Robbins says.

For example, the graphic novel style was selected for one piece because its author, Colby Buzzel, impressed Robbins with his unique feel. “He’s kind of a punk rock kid. He kind of writes like that: staccato, tongue-in-cheek.”

In particular, the graphic novel visualization stands out as eye-catching, drawn in a style reminiscent of the ultra-violent “Sin City.”

Robbins expresses his initial concern that such visuals would lend to the fetishization of the violence of war.

“I definitely was concerned, when we first started getting the images back and looking at the animation, that it looked too cool,” he says. “I feel a tiny conflict about it, but I think if you listen to the piece, it sounds deeply conflicted about the experience being described. And I also feel, being in combat myself as a journalist, there are cool things about it.”

Ultimately, he believes that the style is fitting. “I think that it’s honest in that sense.”

BEYOND PARTIES

Both Yellin and Robbins point out that the documentary itself is focused on the soldiers’ experiences, not politics.

“It’s not political, it’s very experiential,” Yellin says.

Robbins’ own documentary-making ethic centered on staying true to the subjects’ perspectives.

“I think if you look at a person like Michael Moore, those are people who are interested in a type of subject and are essentially choosing subjects. For me, they’re making it in the opposite direction,” he says.

Initially, Robbins loathed scenario re-creation, but he soon changed his mind: “Once I had material, there was no other way to do it.”

The lack of human empathy in politics further motivated the filmmakers to create the documentary.

“[People] don’t want to listen to what they have to go through because it’s a necessary evil,” Robbins says. “I think politics has become a barrier to the human dimension.”

Despite this barrier, he says “it matters to have respect to these people…as part of a democracy.”

ACCLAIMED STORIES

Amidst critical acclaim, the final product has been picked up for theatrical release, unexpected at the inception of the project.

“Operation Homecoming” will be playing at Brookline’s Coolidge Corner Theatre on April 6 and will be airing on PBS on April 16 as part of the series “America at a Crossroads.”

Both Robbins and Yellin desire to bridge the gap between the military and non-military spheres of American life through film.

“The divide in this nation between people who have family in the military and everyone else is a bad thing for society,” Robbins says.

Their experiences documenting soldiers in wartime has been transformative for the two filmmakers, and they hope to pass that on to the American public.

As Robbins says, “The men and women in this film have defied my expectations, and will defy everyone’s expectations. They’re smarter, more thoughtful, and more caring than we like to think soldiers are.”