The Invisible War is a documentary that succeeds at being both incredibly informative and incredibly engaging. There’s not a moment where my eyes weren’t glued to the screen, even as I grew more uncomfortable and disgusted.
Writer-director Kirby Dick is scathing in his examination
but he rarely forces a reaction out of us. He largely lets the terrible truth
about the sexual assaults of women in the military speak for itself through the
testimonies of a number of former servicewomen who were the victims of rape and
sexual assault.
These stories form the spine of The Invisible War. Dick inserts intertitles with facts, and there
are more information-heavy portions where experts lend information on the
nature of the situation interspersed throughout, but more important than this
is how Dick finds the human story.
He draws us in, letting the interviews with the servicewomen
slowly unravel the awful reality of the military’s terrible handling and
concealment of sexual assaults.
The film is never overdone or heavy-handed despite the
seriousness of its subject matter. Dick also
moves the film along at a fast clip, never getting caught up for too long in
any one aspect of the problem. The way he manages to pull out unexpected pieces
of information is another nice detail to the film, notably a brief tangent on
the rape incidences for male service members.
The film is provocative, enlightening, and powerful. It
earns just how emotionally fraught it is and it treats its subject matter with
the appropriate level of sensitivity.
Grade: A
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