The time for readjustment to society may be hard enough for a soldier after wartime, but doubly so for those who return with a new handicap.
Directors John Kane and Peter Jordan tackle the subject in their documentary short, “Left in Baghdad.” They capture a soldier’s new life without his dominant arm, from the moment he left Walter Reed National Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., to his return to his Kentucky home.
“We filmed it about two weeks before the (Walter Reed) scandal, and it was hard to get in then, too,” informs Kane. The two man “lean and mean” crew worked with the bare minimum, using personal and film school equipment and a budget mainly for travel expenses.
Kane is not quite sure how they connected with the soldier. They had sent e-mails to the National Veterans Association requesting an appropriate individual to no avail, but through an unknown link of connections, the soldier’s wife contacted the filmmakers saying they would be interested in participating. Kane says they lucked out in gaining a subject with a good sense of humor and appealing character.
The directors and subject purposely chose to present the soldier’s life without any political context. Kane said he felt there has been enough discussed from both sides of the war debate, so this film focuses specifically on “what it was like to reenter normal life.”
Kane is a film student in Stanford University’s Documentary Film and Video Master’s program. The program allows students to create one film per quarter, with this being Kane’s third film. His next endeavor will be a thesis film, and he plans to focus on undocumented immigration from Mexico into the United States.
Regarding his preference for documentaries, Kane explains, “I respond to the directness of it. I like to deal with social issues as they unfold, not filtered through a script.”