Meryl Richardson

LCACE Inside Out Festival 2010

Birkbeck Cinema – Gorden Square London.

REVIEW

Ghosts and Warriors

Artists Luke Seomore and Joseph Bull’s film follows the journey of ex Para turned photographer Stuart Griffiths and his struggle to integrate back into civilian life after serving in the armed forces. Through haunting commentary and interviews with injured and disillusioned ex-servicemen, Griffiths tries to make sense of his own way back to a ‘normal existence’ and looks at how others cope with their inner demons and sense of abandonment.

With impressionistic images, and a haunting, disjointed soundtrack, the film’s beginning is reminiscent of the vampire movie ‘Let the Right One In’, as Griffiths, the protagonist, wanders the streets alone and homeless; sinking into the protection of darkness, to lead a separate, silent, half-life, in an alien, hostile environment.

The army provides direction, purpose and belonging, and after a career of giving and receiving orders, where the objective is clear, and the way forward only a command away, there seems little possibility of coping with everyday life away from this structure, where responsibility for your actions are for you alone to decide.

Photographer Stuart Griffiths, whose motivation to join up was the threat of a life too ordinary in the black hole of Warrington, has found his way back to visibility through his quietly powerful images, turning ex-soldiers, who were little more than ghosts in society, into works of art, and immortalizing these warriors by giving them the recognition they need, and a platform from which to speak.

The government is only too pleased to highlight the success stories of ex-servicemen, where there are successes, but as Simon Wessely, Civilian Consultant Adviser in Psychiatry to the British Army, and one of the invited panelists taking part in the heated discussion after the screening pointed out, it is the ex-service personnel with mental health issues that really fall between the cracks.

What is really disturbing about the film is that the most recent recruits into the arena of war, did not seem to know why they were in Iraq, or Afghanistan, and felt they were fighting a war they could not win, at a very high price. More than this, they were doing a job, which ethically they seemed to disagree with. They were just obeying orders.

So why are these young people joining up? Have reasons for enlisting changed so very much since the First World War? In 1914, many enlisted in the army because they were homeless, hungry and without a job. Is this so different from escaping a lack of education and a dead-end job stacking shelves in a supermarket? With the cost of a place at university set to rise prohibitively in the next few years, how many more disillusioned youth will join the armed forces because they have no where else to go, only to be put back on the streets four years latter, disillusioned and homeless?

The army seems to provide that rush of adrenaline missing in everyday life; comrades, teamwork, relationships more intense than you will ever find in civey street, a reason to get up in the morning, someone else’s reason, but nevertheless a reason. However, this badge of honour comes at a high price, and perhaps this film should be shown at army recruitment centres around the country, before another disaffected youth signs his body away.

What Luke Seomore and Joseph Bull have achieved is admirable, especially since this film was made on a no/low budget basis. With so many government cuts to the arts threatened, how comforting to think that ‘Isolation’ would still have been made in spite of this. This was an informative and powerful event within the ‘Inside Out’ Festival programme, and a timely reminder of the high price paid fighting for your country.