May 19, 2024
MVD/Cal Turner;
Documentary;
$19.95 DVD;
Not Rated.
Featuring Ret, Col. Don Christensen, Dr. Carol Hendricks, Dr. Shaili Jain, Retired Brig. Gen. Loree Sutton, SPC. Cairey Williams, Sgt. Isaiah James, Maj. Cas Facciponti, Sgt. Chris Taylor, Sgt. 1st Class Travis Hall.
The military recruiter is like a pusher, looking to hook lower-income, less-educated people with the promise of a college degree and a career. All this in exchange for a signature on the dotted line. Remember “I Want You for the U.S. Army,” the famous Uncle Sam propaganda slogan that beefed recruitment during the second World War? The motto would today be amended to include, “Those fortunate enough to return home may find a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head in their future.” The title conflict in director Frances Causey’s revelatory documentary isn’t waged on a battlefield, battleship or in a battle circus offensive. The military’s best kept secret is the number of fatalities that take place back home. The final fight to which the title refers is the veteran’s struggle to resist committing suicide. Over 1.2 million returning soldiers suffer from some degree of brain trauma as a result of time spent serving our country; 125,000 veterans have taken their lives since the Global War on Terrorism began in 2001, making suicide the second-leading cause of death in vets under 45. Final Flight goes behind the statistics, centering our gaze on a group of survivors who witnessed the worst life has to offer and lived to talk about it.
Causey frames Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in historical perspective. John Houston’s Let There Be Light (1946) was the first documentary to breach the subject of mental trauma in returning servicemen. As one vet observed, “The one thing about war is no one comes back unchanged.” In my father’s army, PTSD went by the name ”shell shock” based on a soldier’s inability to shake off the effects of bombs bursting in air. Once upon a time it wasn’t fashionable for a man to exhibit any form of mental incapacity, particularly when it came to war. Veterans were expected to take it like a man, unsee the atrocities, and rejoin the workforce. PTSD didn’t become a formal diagnosis until 1980. Now, 45 years later and for the first time in the history of our nation’s military, suicides outnumber service members killed in active duty three to one. On an equally horrifying note, over half the women in the military have been victims of sexual assault and 35% of the men.
Given the right material, I’ll gladly set aside my indifference to talking-heads documentaries, particularly those compounded by a penchant for onscreen text in favor of voiceover narration. Final Fight makes good on taking a king size break with the past, peeling back further layers of insight into the senselessness of war yet to be mined. And unlike many films of this ilk, content to simply chronicle atrocities, Final Fight suggests a myriad of therapeutic alternatives veterans use to cope with the aftereffects of war. From hyperbaric oxygen chambers and MDMA-assisted psychotherapy to rolling on the ground with llamas, numerous unique ways to treat PTSD are discussed. If it’s hard to understand what playing with llamas has to do with recovery, you’re clearly not the one who risked their life and now suffers permanent brain injury because of it. Under llama therapist Maj. Cas Facciponti’s loving care, the oversized pack animals, poking their necks through the bottom bars of the cage, resemble giant pussycats.
The film didn’t receive an MPAA rating. Were this to play commercial TV or PBS, one can almost understand bleeping profanity, but a DVD? These veterans have endured atrocities that most civilians can’t begin to imagine. They’ve earned the right to an occasional emphatic ‘F’-bomb.
Special features include extended interviews with three of the participants, the Final Fight soundtrack, and a closer look at hyperbaric oxygen therapy.