Soldier Girls

An interesting documentary about women going through Army Basic Training. A few of the girls from a particular company are highlighted as they go through `Bootcamp' As usual there are the typical types i.e. The gung ho, the I don't like it here and want to go home, the I didn't really know I was joining the Army so I'm here illegally, and so on. I'm sure one won't find this video in an Army recruiting office. However before one (particularly a young woman) decides to join the Army this would be a very good film to watch.

Worst type of institutional bullying. Can see why army suicides are so high. This is hardly a team building exercise. If a cadet isn't up for it, makes more sense to send them home, instead of subjecting them to this endless barrage of insults and physical and emotional hardship. Its hard to not find it all a little amusing in light of Full Metal Jacket. I mean Lee Emery's characters was one of my all time favourites ever to appear on celluloid. How ever suicide in American army training camps is a real issue, something which is still making headlines today.

The Documentary Channel has shown this movie a few times. It does show a different side of what the older style of BCT was. Yes it does show a hard side of training, but it is an important lesson. Most recruits don't understand what the Army is about. They see it as a way to receive money for college now days. Some of the women shown in the movie were clearly not ready, or prepared for what they encountered. Others it showed were able to adjust to the training, and see the importance in the methods of the Sergent's attitudes. The methods of training in todays military is completely different, and continues to change each year. The methods shown in this movie are outdated, and no longer accepted.

I would be interested to see what has happened to most of the women highlighted in this 20+ yr. old documentary. To find out how big of an impact that joining or quiting the Army had on their life.

The only reason I don't give this documentary 10 stars is its poor production quality. The film's video and audio are not up to even the standards of 1981. That said, the focus on Basic Training of (female) Army recruits is presented unvarnished in all its cruel reality. (I underwent Basic in 1970, and it was pretty much the same).

Without explaining it in middle school terminology, the way so many modern movies and TV shows do, filmmaker Nick Broomfield lets the principals do the explaining with their actions and their own words. Many times, the hazing of the girls may seem excessive. It's not. The mission is to prepare these future soldiers to survive life and death confrontations, by learning to follow the orders of their superiors instantly and without question. Those who can't or won't are "encouraged" to leave, and they leave. This weeding out is necessary, to save them and their comrades in arms. It ain't beanbag, it's war they're being prepared for!

Finally, the last 2 minutes of this movie are an elegy for Sergeant Hill, the tough male drill instructor. A recruit asks him what effect the (Vietnam) war had on him, and in his plainspoken eloquence, he gives the lie to the glory of battle so exalted in speeches like Shakespeare's Henry V (the famous "Band of Brothers" monologue before Agincourt). His mourning for the death of his soul in the jungles of Vietnam is a moving as anything I've ever heard, and I've often wondered what became of him. And pay attention to the cadence the girls repeat over the closing credits. The hairs will stand up on your neck.

Direct cinema documentary reveals the harrowing methods with which recruits are trained, and it's remarkable how the makers were allowed to capture such shocking scenes; this film very clearly may have been an inspiration for the first half of Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket.