Isabelle is not sure she wants to be fully part of this and it’s all she can do to show up again. Part of the lure is the steadying presence of another vet, Will (Sam Adegoke), who himself doesn’t say much. He’s been recently shaken by the overdose death of a younger veteran (Danny Ramirez) that he had been mentoring. Still the two strike a shaky alliance.
It’s a noisy world in the big city, where overlapping conversations, news broadcasts, speeches replay even after the fact — as if the characters are remembering chunks of the day’s conversations later at night. Or are those voices in the head?
When Will leaves town after an opening of veterans art (where the maddening phrase “Thank you for your service” by clueless viewers rings especially hollow), Isabelle goes after him to his upstate retreat.
There, amid the trees, rocks and falls, they ultimately try to find a way to honor the fallen soldier.
Maybe it’s the silence of the rural setting, and the absence of the real vets, but they initially don’t know how to proceed. It’s not exactly romance they’re after, but neither are either of them going to freak out or go psycho — a feature of past Hollywood war movies they enumerate and condemn in one conversation.
The truth is that the characters are each so broken in their way, it’s encouraging to see them try to find a way out of their darkness; the outside world, unaware of their sacrifices or the horrors they’ve seen, certainly can’t or won’t help.
Lugacy’s characters are inarticulate and often silent for long stretches in a realistic way; both she and Adegoke are strong enough actors to carry the film physically with their usually pained facial expressons.
What Hollywood touches there are in the starkly indie production of what was once titled “8,000 Shots” comes largely behind the scenes — the producer of “This is Not a War Story” is Rosario Dawson, who starred in Lugacy’s feature film debut, the 2007 film “Descent.”
But there’s also a marvelous scene featuring Frances Fisher of “Unforgiven” and who played Kate Winslet’s mother in “Titanic.” Here, she plays Isabelle’s uncaring mother, who rejected her daughter’s choice to join the military, lives in her own crumbling world, and may be part of the reason for Isabelle’s inner rage.
“This is Not a War Story” doesn’t have all the answers, but the film, already a winner at last month’s San Francisco Indie fest, shows how the struggle, and ultimate survival, will come through veterans working to help each other through their own art and creativity, examples of which help an already very strong film rise further.
“This is Not a War Story” is currently on a festival run, winning the Audience Award at the San Francisco Indie Festival last month and scheduled to play the Cinequest Film Festival March 28.