Before You Enlist, Watch Combat Obscura
Have you ever wanted to experience war? Have you thought about enlisting? Ever fantasized about donning those sharp dress blues and becoming a hero?
Before you do, watch Combat Obscura.
As an MOS 4612, also known as a Combat Cameraman, LCpl. Miles Lagoze’s job in Afghanistan was to obtain combat footage for “use in a broad range of areas including, but not limited to...public information, recruiting, etc.” In other words, he was there to film propaganda. But he filmed a lot more, and the result is Combat Obscura. In this way, the film itself is an act of insubordination, and that’s what makes it different from embedded journalism or official military content. This 2018 documentary offers the most honest and shattering view of the American war machine’s involvement in the Middle East to date.
Combat Obscura distinguishes itself from traditional war documentaries with its simplicity. We’re presented with a sequence of scenes from a tour in Afghanistan and watch as events unfold. That’s it. No narrator. No maps. No on-screen text to provide the context of a date or additional details. We’re at an outpost in Afghanistan and, to the young men who are there, that’s all that matters. This minimal post-production gives us what we want to see most: raw, unfiltered combat. By allowing scenes to play out for several minutes at a time, Lagoze syncs the viewer with the emotional rhythms of combat. Regaining your breath after a sprint through enemy fire, patching yourself up from shrapnel wounds, collecting your thoughts after a near miss, watching a medivac fly away with your buddy...as we learn, the most devastating parts of war are the moments in between the action. These are the spaces where the viewer really begins to settle into the psyche of a combat soldier and the fear that creeps in between the action. This is also where your preconceived notions of combat begin to dissolve.
In particular, one is struck by how young the Marines seem. Yes, we know that teenagers are sent to war, but we tend to assume that they’re in the good care of older, more experienced officers. As the film develops and interviews take place, the immaturity of the Marines stands out and one wonders, are there any adults present? Who’s supervising these kids? In perhaps a conscious editorial choice by Lagoze, the only middle aged adults we see in the film are Afghan civilians.
One scene shows a pre-patrol warmup ritual, and if it weren’t for the desert cammies, body armor, and guns, one could easily mistake the rowdy group of kids as a high school football team getting ready for practice. If the Marine Corps uses polished footage to sell a recruitment story of purpose and adulthood, Combat Obscura leaves you with something harder to market: kids stumbling through a war that no one seems to be directing. It is an unintentional coming-of-age story in a world with no adult supervision - and guns.
Though Lagoze has stated his intent is for the film to serve as a counter-recruitment tool, the combat scenes are equally riveting as they are brutal. We see 19-year-old kids sprinting through fire to rescue wounded brothers and comfort mortally wounded comrades. In those moments, the courage, loyalty, and adrenaline promised by recruitment ads are undeniably real. But Lagoze refuses to let those feelings become a clean story of heroism. The film makes their bravery undeniable, but it never lets us forget how young they are, or how little control they have over the war around them.
Since Lagoze offers no help in understanding what we’re watching, the viewer is left with the burden of trying to make sense of it all. That may be the closest the film can bring us to the reality of combat: not its explosions or near-misses, but its uncertainty. There are no clean answers, no commanding father figures, and no triumphant transformation from boy to hero. There are only young Marines, caught between bravado and terror, trying to make a life-or-death situation feel normal. Before you enlist for the bravado, the purpose, or the heroism, watch Combat Obscura—then ask yourself whether anyone in the film has found those things.
