Saints on the Battlefield

Pastor Turner and his congregation

“Saints on the Battlefield”

A Review of Indivisible by Nick Olszyk

MPAA Rating, PG-13

USCCB Rating, Not Rated at the time of this review

Reel Rating, Three Reels            

Disclaimer: This is a review of Invisible as a piece of art and work of entertainment. I have precious little contact with those in the service and cannot speak to its accuracy in recounting the experiences of war.

            Journalist Chris Hedges described war as “a force that gives us meaning.” Young, naïve army chaplain Darren Turner (Justin Bruening) does not understand this when Indivisible begins, but the reality soon comes crashing down. War strips humans down to their most bare selves. For Darren, this means encountering God as a real person rather than words on a page. This is a truth that comes across somewhat poorly in Indivisible but comes across nonetheless.

Darren is a nice, suburban pastor of an unspecified denomination with a stay-at-home wife, several kids, and great abs: the picture of WASP bliss. For some reason that is never fully explained, he decides to volunteer as an army chaplain, which involves a year-long tour in Iraq. A veteran warns him that his home life “will never be the same,” but Darren just shrugs it off. The more seasoned soldiers are slow to warm to him and often visit just for the food. Gradually, they begin to accept him as he experiences the daily strife of warfare. The natural consequences of combat slowly creep into his personality as Darren becomes irritable, anxious, and distant from his family. When he finally returns home, he brings the war with him.

It is quite unnerving at how naïve Darren is when he first arrives at the base. He has no personal experience of violence and his answers to the probing, honest questions of his congregation are dry and rehearsed. “Let me give you some advice,” a friend suggests. “Just speak from your heart.” While Darren does occasionally find himself in dangerous situations, he never experiences any real harm. Despite this, he immediately looses himself at the first sight of death. What did he expect? Bruening’s performance is often overdramatic, crying and yelling over the smallest detail of suffering. As such, I worry that many real veterans might see this as ingenuine. A pastor should be able to keep a level head when faced with the ordinary realities of the situation, including inevitable questions of evil, the afterlife, freewill, moral compromise, and responsibility.

Indivisible improves dramatically when Darren returns home to his wife Heather (Sarah Drew) and kids. Here, the audience can witness disturbing signs of PTSD and shaken faith. Darren is confused, angry, and constantly leaving the home to be by himself. Before, he gave help. Now he must learn to accept the care of others. It is still odd that he would fall apart after so little, but he is able to learn from the experience and become a better minister for it, understanding that perhaps that was God’s plan all along.

I have no doubt there are many wonderful Protestant chaplains serving bravely and effectively in our armed forces, but I couldn’t help wondering if Darren’s unit would have better been served by a Catholic priest whose celibacy and sacramental economy would be huge benefits in the trenches. One of the difficulties Darren faces is that, as a Protestant, the Bible and oral preaching are his only tools. It would have been so much more effective to see the crucified Jesus hanging on the wall and recognize that God understands our pain and confusion. There are little hints of this tangibility with small medals labeled “the armor of God” that Darren gives to his men, but that’s it. War also inevitably strains the family, and a priest would have no family to strain. The army is his family.

There is nothing overtly bad about Indivisible, which highlights the important and often overlooked role of army chaplains, but there is nothing profound or compelling either. There are so many better films that deal with the same themes as Saving Private Ryan, The Hurt Locker, or American Sniper. War is not a something that can honestly covered in a PG-13, squeaky clean manner. I would love to see a realistic, gritty, R-rated version of the life of Catholic chaplains Emil Kapaun or Vincent Capodanno, who died saving the souls and bodies of their fellows. That would be a great film.