The Tillman Story (Sunday, August 22, 2010) (107)

I have to admit that even as a pretty avid football watcher (college and pro) I had never heard of Pat Tillman until he was killed in action in Afghanistan in April 2004. (In my defense, I don't really care about Arizona State football and the Arizona Cardinals were going into their 70th or so year of cellar dwelling around the time he started playing for them.) For me the original story I heard about him made total sense: As a meat-headed jock he decided to enlist in the Army the day after September 11, 2001; he was tragically killed by enemy fire in Afghanistan. He immediately became a national hero, in part because he played our national sport and in part because he gave up lots of money to serve in the Army.


Of course, almost none of that story is actually true. What came out over the next months and years was that Tillman was a wild individualist who did join after September 11, though his motives for doing so were always a bit murky. He was a very smart guy and by the time he was killed, he was basically totally against the war in Iraq and much of what was happening on the ground in Afghanistan. He hated George W. Bush and was a proud atheist. He was killed by friendly - not enemy - fire, although the Pentagon hid this fact for at least a month after his death.


The Tillman Story is a very interesting and heartbreaking documentary about how Pat Tillman's death was used by the Bush Administration and the Pentagon as a political cudgel, burying the truth and never owning up to the disgusting lengths they went to create a fantasy universe of heroes and American Exceptionalism. Director Amir Bar-Lev does a very nice job of weaving in the facts of the story with the emotional experience of his family and friends and the greater political meaning of these strands.


The film walks us through the main points of the narrative, from his background as a foul-mouthed wildboy jock (he and his brothers never met a use for the word "fuck" they didn't love), to his college career (with a 3.8 GPA... not bad!), to his days busting his ass to make an NFL team despite his rather average height, to his enlistment and service in two tours of duty. We see how his family was informed about his death and how immediately facts of the case were being kept from them.


For his family, there was the Pat they knew and the Pat they saw on the TV news. Senator John McCain made a sickening speech at his memorial service about how he was being "reunited with his God" or some such nonsense - of course Pat didn't have a God... but that was not something a politician or a 24-hour news outlet could admit to. The heroic prop he was turned into was disheartening to his family, and his mother, Dannie, began doing the job no journalist was willing to do: looking into the friendly-fire killing and finding out why it was covered up and never owned up to.


We should not forget that by April 2004, the war in Iraq was not going brilliantly. The administration had been embarrassed by the fraudulent Jessica Lynch rescue story and the damning torture photos from Abu Ghraib had just been released. The tragic death of a professional athlete (even an obscure one) became a life raft for military support. It could re-position the war as a battle of good against evil and lift it up out of the mud it was in.


The film is as much as condemnation of the press (especially cable news) as it is a condemnation of Rumsfeld and Bush (who are shown to be the dark, evil men that they are). We see how brazen the news companies were to tell a binary story of an uncomplicated man who died in action. Once it came out that he was killed by a fellow American soldier, it became a double tragedy, and he became a symbol for the confusion of battle.


Bar-Lev shows how television news programs used the term "fog of war" dozens of times to hold nobody accountable for the tragedy (lest the troops who actually fired on their fellow soldier be disciplined). And with nobody accountable, Bush and his cronies got away with turning Pat Tillman into something he never was. Even after all the facts of the cover-up were on the table, we see Wolf Blitzer still talking about how some general at the Pentagon "bungled" the story. There was no mistake made by the Pentagon. That general was following orders to lie and cover-up the friendly fire - orders he got from higher up the chain of command. Of course we never get that view of the story.


This is a very well crafted, well structured film. It presents the story in a way that shows the Pentagon, the news media, Bush and his posse as well as main street America all complicit in the cover-up of a truly terrible story. It is not preachy, but it is very powerful.


Stars: 3 of 4