Educational Media Reviews Online

Left in Baghdad is a short, simple, and affecting vérité-style film about Ross Graydon, an American soldier whose left arm was blown off while serving in Iraq. The films follows Graydon during his last days at the Walter Reed Medical Center, and as he and his family prepare to move back to their home in Fort Campbell, Kentucky.

This is a quiet documentary, a film in which the drama and emotional power lie in back-story and things not shown, as much as the images on the screen. We watch as Ross gets fit for a prosthesis. He talks with the technician about the skin color of the new arm and about his concern that the artificial fingernails look clean. He jokes about removing his new arm and brandishing it to scare the wits out of kids at an amusement park. ("See! I told you to keep your hands inside the car at all times!"). Graydon's daughter brings him to school for show-and-tell, and the kids fight to touch his robotic arm.

There's an unexpectedly moving scene at the school, in which Ross deftly maneuvers a piece of pizza into position with his new arm. Graydon is, in general, remarkably upbeat and stoic about his injuries. His young daughter's recounting of how her father received his grave injuries is also curiously matter-of-fact and dry-eyed. In general, the film provides only fleeting evidence of the deeper psychological and emotional wounds suffered by Ross and his family, and one is left wishing that the documentary were longer and a bit more expansive. If there's a small peeve with this work, besides its brevity, it's the tendency of the filmmakers to do the "Barbara Walters Thing": to hold close-up shots of subjects a bit too long, hoping for a dramatic, tearful reaction. Left in Baghdad was produced as part of the MFA documentary and video program at Stanford University, and can perhaps be forgiven these small cinematic missteps, (One just wishes that the sticker price for this short student film were not so high). While the work deserves to be in larger video collections, libraries may also want to consider acquiring the documentary Home Front (Cinema Guild), which offers a considerably more fully realized view of wounded vets.