Movie Review: Baghdad High

Nancy Dewolf Smith - Associated Press

The first person we meet in "Baghdad High" (9-10:30 p.m. EDT Monday on HBO) is Hayder, an Iraqi teenager who, in October 2006, was just beginning his final year of high school. That was at the height of violence in Iraq, when 2,722 deaths would make it the worst month of the war. Up in his room, however, Hayder is singing along with a video of Britney Spears's "I'm a Slave 4 U." His choice of song is not a comment on the situation in Iraq, and that is part of what makes "Baghdad High" an unforgettable experience. Like other kids his age, Hayder just wants to have fun.

We know this because Hayder and three classmates were given cameras and asked to film their own experiences over the school year. It is obvious from the result - writer-producers Ivan O'Mahoney and Laura Winter edited the raw footage - that all the boys were traumatized by the terror around them. But the moments that they chose to film more often show normal teenagers at play: watching videos on their cellphones, texting a girlfriend, comparing beard growth, bragging about their soccer prowess ("They say I play like Beckham," one explains), agonizing over college-entrance exams and speaking English to display their longed-for hipness. "Oh, my God, you look like a vampire, man," one friend tells another.

Yes, life goes on even in Baghdad and is all the more poignant because while these kids enjoy rap music, they know more about the mean streets than many of America's faux gangstas ever will. They casually distinguish between the engine sounds of U.S. Chinook and Apache helicopters overhead, and on New Year's Eve they argue about whether the bangs nearby are fireworks or lethal rounds coming from a passing car. Mohammed's mother uses the rear-view window of the car to adjust her makeup before driving him to school. But mothers elsewhere don't have to stop at military checkpoints and worry that their son's camera will get him arrested as a terrorist reconnoitering a possible attack site.

Against the background of war, though, it is the innocent tenderness of these young people that stands out. As smoke rises from explosions in the city, two of the boys are focused on a wounded pigeon they have rescued. In his loneliness after his favorite classmate leaves town, Mohammed lovingly films a rodent that has entered his house. "This is an extraordinary mouse," he tells the camera. "I will make her my friend." That he can cry when the mouse dies tells us something both sad and beautiful about the workings of the human heart.

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