Father Soldier Son

Dirs: Leslye Davis and Catrin Einhorn (1hr 39mins) (15)

★★★★

Shot over the course of nearly a decade from 2010, this documentary portrait of an American family “delivers a huge emotional payload”, said Tim Robey in The Daily Telegraph – though it is as unpredictable as life itself. When he is deployed in Afghanistan, single father Sergeant Brian Eisch leaves his two young sons – Isaac, 12, and Joey, 7 – in the care of an uncle. Soon after, he sustains a serious leg wound, and the limb eventually has to be amputated. We watch him grapple painfully with disability, but what “fascinates” most is how the boys are affected, not only by his absences and his suffering, but also by the family’s “hereditary machismo”. At 16, Isaac ponders whether their sacrifices have been worth it, and upsets his father by questioning the long family tradition of military service.

Directors Catrin Einhorn and Leslye Davis scrupulously dodge overt “political discussion”, said Benjamin Lee in The Guardian, a decision that felt “inorganic” to me, given the upheaval of the past decade. And while they hint at the pressures their male subjects feel to avoid emoting and to relish violence, I wondered what the many “scraps of family life” that make up the film amounted to in the end. A “judgement-free zone”, the film prioritises “connection and understanding” over “ideological differences”, said Lisa Kennedy in Variety. And it has plenty of emotional power and insight – including one “unforeseen, shattering moment” that left me sobbing and screaming at the screen.

Available on Netflix.