The late Michael Grigsby’s final film is a follow up to his 1970 documentary I WAS A SOLDIER, which examined the effects of the Vietnam war on three young men who had returned home. WE WENT TO WAR catches up with the same veterans over 40 years later to see how the passage of time has affected them. It is an outstanding and immensely moving portrait, examining how the burden of war is passed down through generations, affecting not only the soldiers themselves but also their families and communities for years after the event.

This toxic pain is shown to manifest itself through an inability to communicate with loved ones and many other depressingly familiar traits: battles with alcohol, drugs, crime, depression and violence. All are alluded to here in a very understated way.

That is what makes Grigsby and producer Rebekah Tolley’s film so remarkable: its resolutely unhysterical approach. There are no tacky mock-flashbacks or dramatic attempts to tug heartstrings. The stillness and simplicity of the imagery, whether watching the countryside pass by from a car window or observing friends and relatives go about their lives, gives the film an honesty that makes its emotional content all the more affecting. The photography of the Texan landscape is beautiful to be sure, but it plays an important role; the truthfulness of nature contrasting with the deceit and lies of war. The wide open spaces and empty blue skies suggest a pleasant and restful idyll, presumably standing in stark contrast to the combat that David and Dennis, the two main participants returning from the first film, must have experienced.

Peer a little closer beneath this becalmed surface, the film seems to be saying, and you’ll see that all is not well.

Even today, one of them says, the US government is unwilling to help those who still suffer either physically or mentally from their service in Vietnam; refusing to provide medical care for conditions brought on by the use of chemical weapons unless the veteran’s involvement with their use is proven beyond any doubt. This betrayal – having recruited, trained and then abandoned them – seems as painful to the survivors as any physical scars they carry. Worryingly, it appears to be an attitude that hasn’t changed much for more recent conflicts. In one scene, Dennis, the more bullish of the two, sits down with two younger army personnel struggling to deal with their own harrowing experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan. He listens quietly but offers little reaction, as though he knows only too well how hard it is and has no desire to reopen old wounds.

A split screen showing footage of a car journey through a town used in I WAS A SOLDIER alongside the same journey today illustrates how much, or how little, it has changed on the surface. But the passage of time and years of economic woes have taken their toll. Peer a little closer beneath this becalmed surface, the film seems to be saying, and you’ll see that all is not well. Empty, boarded up shops have taken control of the main street. This is an America hit hard by the recession – inner pain once again masked by an outwardly normal appearance. It is a condition that Grigsby and Tolley portray to quietly devastating effect.

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