Ashes

American Sniper meets Requiem for a Dream in Adrian Bartol’s Ashes. Written by and starring Will Brandt as a veteran whose homecoming was plagued with rejection and intolerance. Like the final words of Barry Pepper’s narration of We Were Soldiers, those who have seen war never stop seeing it. In the night’s quiet, Matt Benning (Will Brandt) still hears the screams of the friends he left behind, to die in a place far from home.

So, cast aside by his family and being all but forgotten by the country he served so bravely, what is a soldier with no more battles to fight to do? How are men, who have ostensibly had the humanity trained out of them, so there is no thought, no hesitation under fire, supposed to move on? They are programmed to kill or be killed. And sadly, those are skills that don’t easily translate over to the regular day-to-day workflow.

Hence, Matt keeps moving until one night he meets his damaged Juliet, Brandi (Ruby Modine). She seems worldly but genuine. The pair became fast friends, striking up a Leaving Las Vegas type of connection. Though Matt does not know the hurricane he’s hung his hat on, and though Brandi is open in appearance, she soon proves elusive. After promising him a job hook-up, she remains unreachable.

But just like the wind, Brandi blows back into town and connects Matt with a man she refers to as Uncle Bill (played with brilliant menace by Michael Ironside). The gas station needs only one thing from the roaming soldier, and that’s a man who can handle himself and who will call him on his cell. The second he sees someone or something out of the ordinary, come waltzing into his place.

“The wayward couple descend into a drug-fueled dance of depravity, despair and death.”

Matt takes the easy gig, and Bill seems to take a liking to this formerly aimless soul. Matt and Brandi move in together, and then the fairy tale goes sideways. What starts with idle bickering over secrets Matt hides about his experiences in combat, plus the frustration of not being able to secure help from veteran’s services, soon becomes cold shoulders and long silences.

Matt confronts Brandi with her drug use, and she throws that right back at him. For while he pops pills and drinks, she’s got her friendly neighborhood meth to keep her company, help bury the misery of being raped by her stepfather, whilst her mother lies stoned in another room. Hurt people, hurt people, and soon Matt and Brandi are more at odds than equals.

Contemplating leaving her to her habit, Matt takes off with some desert-dwelling partiers. But as the moment of unfaithfulness is upon, Matt declares his love for Brandi and tells his fling that he’s not interested. Yet, as he gives his date a ride home, she shines a light on Brandi’s secret double life as an addict and a mule for Uncle Bill.

The wayward couple descends into a drug-fueled dance of depravity, despair, and death. At first, Matt is all too willing to serve the wants of Uncle Bill, if only to get his fix. But soon, Bill asks more of Matt, culminating in ordering him to murder his competitor in the local drug trade. The lovers’ bond and personal wills twisted and bent to the breaking point. Finally, the former warrior must choose between being a slave to the substance or the slaughtered ghosts of his past. Whichever path, Mr. Benny so discovers, like in battle, there’s no easy way out, and not everyone gets out alive.

Ashes has a poetic quality to its tragedy. This reviewer puts that down to the Thin Red Line-like narration in Brandt’s screenplay, which plays over slightly unreal visual scenes, marking both the brief moments of joy and drawn-out stretches of misery on the road to redemption. This drama is of a quality unseen in multiplexes of late. While the big boys fight over which IP they’re committed to bastardizing next, storytellers of the independent kind are bringing in mini moving masterworks of this ilk.