User Reviews

As with Jon Alpert's 'Alive Day Memories' - which moved too fast through war survivors' stories to get the full impact, I once again found myself feeling guilty for not being more moved.

This is an unflinching portrait of the grieving of families who lost loved ones in Iraq and Afghanistan. While it can't help but be affecting for a while, the endless parade of so many weeping faces starts to become numbing not moving. It also starts to feels a dangerously on the edge of exploitive.

Certainly that's not the intent. And given that in our recent wars the government has been careful to hide the bodies, coffins and death there's a real social value to being reminded that these were real young men and women - parents, children, spouses - dying over there. But by moving so quickly from one grieving family to the next, there's a missed chance to get to know these people (women mostly) left behind to try and carry on as more than just symbols of loss.

I loved Alpert's 'Baghdad ER' because it did the opposite of these two more recent parts of what became a trilogy about the Iraq war. It turned the soldiers and the doctors fighting to save them into real, complete, complex human beings, and not just symbols of war, bravery and devastation

I just watched this documentary on HBO. While it was well done, watching it was among the saddest, most heart wrenching experiences I've had in watching any movie. The grief and agony of the families and friends of those brave men and women who are interred in Section 60 was so incredibly palpable, my heart goes out to all of them.

I am a big time imdb user and have valued user reviews, until today. This is the first time I feel compelled to write a review. This documentary is very well done. It appropriately honors and respects our soldiers and their families.

Clearly, these 3 reviewers have never lost a loved one or been to a funeral or cemetery. Nor have they been to a military cemetery.

I was born in Arlington Hospital, almost 60 years ago, and have continued to live in Northern Virginia. I have been to Arlington Cemetery for funerals and to pay respects to President Kennedy. I cannot enter or leave Washington, DC, without seeing Arlington Cemetery. At night, someone in Washington can look across the Potomac River and see the eternal flame for President Kennedy.

I have also had the privilege of paying my respects at the Normandy Cemetery and Memorial. My father landed at Omaha Beach during the D-Day Invasion. I am confident Dad would be very pleased with this documentary. I wonder if these 3 reviewers have even heard of the D-Day Invasion.

These 3 reviewers were looking for entertainment. Documentaries are not meant to be entertainment, but informative.

Section 60: Arlington National Cemetery (2008)

*** (out of 4)

Directors John Alpert and Matthew O'Neill made this moving documentary that pretty much does nothing except stay at the Arlington National Cemetery to talk with family members of those who have died in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The film clocks in at just over 50-minutes and the majority of that time we just hear from various family members who talk about their loved ones who have died. Some people just come to cry at their tombstones. Some people come to share a beer with them while others come to take a nap with those who have died. For the most part this is a good film but at the same time I'm really not sure who I'd recommend it to. The thing is incredibly depressing to watch so I'm sure this will have most people not wanting to check it out. I mean, most people don't find entertainment in being depressed. Another thing is that the film does appear to be missing something as I'm not quite sure what it's goal was. At times I really did feel as if these people should have had their own time without a camera there but I guess the argument to this is that they all agreed to be on camera. I'm sure other documentaries could cover other stories like how much space is left available on Section 60 and there's quick shot here of the people who take care of the grave site.

This is a tough review to write. I need to say up front that I respect our men and women in the military who fight for freedom across the globe. These brave souls deserve our all, and seeing the final resting places of those who didn't make it is humbling in the extreme.

But if we're going to be honest about reviewing this documentary, then we have to do it objectively (i.e., without emotions, and an eye toward education and informing the general public).

My first big problem is that there's very little information given on SECTION 60; about it's formation, the battle for more space for grave sites, who oversees the care of the grounds, and how the families of the deceased view these aspects. Instead, the camera is relegated to basically being a fly on the wall while families visit the cemetery. We see families cry, touch headstones, leave trinkets for their dearly departed, and listen to them mourn. And that is the entirety of the film. It is also focused almost entirely on those soldiers killed in the current Middle East conflicts, with nothing noted about the surrounding soldiers who've been there since Vietnam, Korea and beyond.

Another big problem is that there were too many lingering shots of headstones. Headstones being cleaned. Headstones with the sun setting behind them. Headstones with jelly beans on them. This might not have been too bad if the documentarians had included informational dialogue during a few of them. But the shots are eerily silent, making it seem more macabre than packing any sort of emotional punch. Too, I found these overly-long shots (sorry to say) exceptionally boring.

Let's not forget that these brave men and women died so that we might live, too. Life is for the living, not the dead. And it is the living and how they deal with what's left to them that I would've found more fascinating than this current documentary.

As we're days away from the 21st Anniversary of September 11th, and the soon restart of the war in Iraq and our 20 year war with Afghanistan, I found this documentary on Arlington which at first until we started it I thought it was on the Cemetery and unknowns themselves. It is actually on the lives lost and the families who sacrificed the ultimate sacrifice. Which after the way we left has got to be even harder to accept these losses for theses families.

I encourage you to watch and honor those who avenged the almost 3000 lives lost on 9-11 and vowed to God, Country and us to fight for us to protect us most they never knew but fight on for our freedoms.

Our freedom for family, religion, to protest, to live, for our individual beliefs, these men and women fought and died and still are for us that we can live and give to and love one another or like what's been going on especially the last 5-10 years to not respect each other, to ruin others property, to rip this country to shreds. I believe with all my heart if we TRULY TOOK TO HEART these sacrifices like Christians and people of Faith do for Christs death and sacrifice. If we really appreciated these sacrifices we'd look for ways to honor them. What's the best and easiest way to do that.. By looking at the examples from our greatest generation and a few after that, and practice what they have, in treating others better than ourselves , respect and love others even if we don't agree.

Watching this , seeing families heartbreak and sacrifice should make us want to do better thus quit focusing on our differences instead focus and live like these soldiers do especially on the battlefield having the back of those on either side of you, no time to fight each other because the enemy of the press, enemy of opinions, our out right enemy's of country.

I did a survey yesterday and 56% don't think on 10 years we will be half the country we are today. Unless we all take to heart the sacrifices and do our part it won't.

And all the soldiers and family members since the Revolutionary War to Afghanistan sacrifices will have all been in vain.

So think of ways to honor all those sacrifices and maybe we can turn things around.

Please keep these families in prayer and if you know, meet or run into a soldier or they're families Thank Them and remember they're resacrificing as Christ did so we don't have to.... but we should help them carry that burden or at the very least try to be a person worth that sacrifice which we will never be...