Sometime last year, the term “Iraq fatigue” was coined to describe the unwillingness of festival audiences and box office patrons to engage with the glut of Iraq documentaries being made. I would call Full Battle Rattle a post-fatigue film.

Rather than focus on the battle field, the administration’s failed policies, or the diplomatic fallout of illegal rendition and torture, the film examines a model Iraqi town in the Mojave desert used to train troops before deployment. By looking at a simulation of the violence and political strife, directors Tony Gerber and Jesse Moss are able to engage subjects that would otherwise be too politically divisive to find an audience on both sides of the political divide. The film is a surprising mix of what could be read as surreal and biting commentary on the American war machine on the one hand, and a loving portrait of honorable soldiers on the other.

The impetus for Iraq fatigue is not so much that the content of the myriad documentaries is too jarring, or that exposure to the horror of war is too difficult to stomach, but rather that the politics espoused in these films has become predictable to the liberals who tend to make up the audience. While it may seem that standing up against an unjust war is brave, preaching to the choir never takes any balls.

Full Battle Rattle manages to escape the trap many Iraqumentaries fall into, in that it appeals to both side of the aisle. It is a challenging film for anyone with a clear position on the war, which is almost everyone. The tension created by a genuinely politically jarring film was apparent in the Q and A after the premiere. On stage with the directors were two Iraqi American women who worked as role-players in the village along with several soldiers featured in the film. A seemingly aggravated audience member accused Gerber and Moss of sharing the apparent fate of many embedded journalists: forming bonds with soldiers in stressful situations, they then become unable to speak critically of the soldiers or the war. Tony Gerber paraphrased this question, “Did we drink the Kool-Aid?” They then admitted to being “East Coast liberals,” but explained that a didactic ideology is exactly what they didn’t want in the film.

The film works on many levels, but its most shining success is showing the war, and rampant militarization in general, as an extremely complicated matter, one that cannot be boiled down to sound-bites and absolutes.

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