The War Around Us Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		4.0

The War Around Us Blu-ray Movie Review

Nowhere to Run

Reviewed by Michael Reuben July 31, 2014

The War Around Us is a unique documentary about the experience of two journalists on the ground during a 2008 action by Israel against suspected Palestinian terrorists in Gaza City. Americans saw little of this coverage, because they were preoccupied by the financial crisis following the collapse of Lehman Bros. and the aftermath of the recent presidential election. Indeed, if the Israeli military planners had prevailed, there would have been no coverage at all, since foreign journalists were barred from entering the area. But even the best planning can't anticipate every contingency. As it turned out, Sherine Tadros, a British national just beginning her career, and Ayman Mohyeldin, an Egyptian-American and veteran of CNN, were both in Gaza City working for Al Jazeera English when Israeli jets and drones began firing missiles into the densely populated streets and buildings. The pair remained for the entire twenty-two days of the siege, filing reports wearing flak jackets and combat helmets, living in constant danger of being blown up by the next sortie.

The reporters' dispatches alone would make a compelling documentary, but The War Around Us works on multiple levels. Because of the peculiar geography of Gaza—a narrow strip of land on the edge of the Mediterranean with Egypt on one edge and Israel bordering the rest—its residents had no place to flee the conflict. Neither did the two journalists, which put them in the same situation as the people on whom they were reporting. They became, and have remained, the voice of the anguished civilian population. They have also forged a unique friendship, much like soldiers in combat, even as each has moved on to other work (Ayman to NBC, Sherine to Doha Qatar) and other news stories (such as the Arab Spring). Perhaps most importantly, their work stands as an implicit critique of what so much of war journalism has become, namely, a parroting of official stories by embedded journalists whose access is conditioned on reports favorable to the military authorities on whom they are reporting. Sherine and Ayman, by contrast, reported stories that military officials would almost certainly have preferred be kept quiet.

Sherine and Ayman are separately interviewed, and their recollections are intercut with excerpts from their news reports and personal video from their long hours with little sleep, limited supplies and a city crumbling around them. Writer/director Abdallah Omeish, one of the makers of the HBO documentary series Witness, uses the interplay between the immediacy of the contemporaneous reports and the relative composure of the present-day interviews both to vary the film's tempo and also to comment on the difference between the two reporters' approaches. The more seasoned Ayman focused on facts, figures and statistics, while he pressed his junior colleague to get out into the streets and interview individuals, sensing in her a gift for drawing out people's stories so that the conflict would have individual faces and voices. As Ayman observes near the end of The War Around Us, it was Sherine's reports that had the most impact on their viewers and that are best remembered.

Ayman arrived in Gaza in the early spring of 2008 for a one-year assignment. Shortly after he arrived, Eygpt's then-President Hosni Mubarak negotiated a six-month ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, which had become the governing Palestinian authority two years earlier. With no real enforcement mechanism, the ceasefire quickly broke down in a series of attacks and counterattacks. By late December, Israeli Prime Minister Olmert made it clear that Israel was preparing to take major action.

Sherine had come to Gaza City in early November for what was supposed to be a 24-hour assignment with Ayman. But events were moving so quickly that she remained to continue covering whatever happened next. On Saturday, December 27, Sherine and Ayman were sitting in a coffee shop when they heard the first missile strike hit Gaza City. They immediately returned to their office and began preparing a broadcast.

For the next twenty-two days, the two reporters continued broadcasting, as the Israeli air force continued its relentless assault, eventually reducing entire neighborhoods of Gaza City to rubble. A ground invasion began on January 3, 2009, further limiting the reporters' movements, which were already hampered by debris and the constant need to take evasive action. A wrong turn could be fatal. Sherine relates how Ayman's decision one day not to get a sandwich from a particular falafel stand saved their lives, because it was vaporized a few minutes later by a missile.

The images captured by these reporters and their camera crews defy description. A major metropolitan hospital is overwhelmed by the inflow of patients with massive, life-threatening injuries. Parents scream in despair for their fatally injured children. Rows of ash-covered corpses, many of them children under ten, are lined up in the street. Young survivors are barely able to speak after witnessing their entire families killed when their homes collapse around them. A U.N. facility stocked with emergency provisions blazes out of control after being ignited by an incendiary device dropped from the sky.

Meanwhile, the military authorities conducting these attacks reassure the world that the strikes are "surgical" and designed to avoid civilian casualties. In fact, somewhere between 1100 and 1400 Palestinians died in the conflict, as opposed to 13 Israelis (four of them from friendly fire). Four years later, 75% of the civilian homes destroyed in the attacks had not been rebuilt.

The War Around Us wisely avoids disappearing down the rabbit hole of attempting to decipher the causes of the conflict or apportion blame to either side. Its aim is to convey the sensation of being a witness, and always a potential target, which is the situation of nearly every civilian, as modern armaments rain down destruction from above, often controlled by remote operators many miles away. As Ayman says at one point, with obvious frustration, he wants to ask the decision-makers, "Do you know what happens when you drop this bomb on these people?" One of the most disturbing thoughts suggested by The War Around Us is that the answer might be yes.

The War Around Us Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The War Around Us was edited together from a variety of sources of varying quality. The contemporary interviews with Sherine Tadros and Ayman Mohyeldin were captured in a studio on HD video and are consistently the best-looking segments on MPI Media's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray. Other sources have been manipulated digitally to extract the maximum available resolution and remove whatever interference and video noise existed. Cell phone video benefits the most from this post-production clean-up, as a comparison between the finished film and some of the raw footage in the extras confirms. Some of the original broadcasts appear to have been refined and upconverted as well, especially since they were live broadcasts and would have been affected by the explosions and other events that often interrupted the reporters. Given the wide variation in the quality of materials, the technical crew have done a remarkable job of harmonizing the sources and easing the transitions between them.

The War Around Us Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Blu-ray's primary soundtrack is a 5.1 mix encoded in lossless Dolby TrueHD. As is usually the case with documentaries, the mix is front-oriented with the focus on the speaking voices of the reporters and their interview subjects. Stereo separation is used to good effect, however, in more personal segments in the news office, where the staff is talking as a group (usually in Arabic, with non-switchable English subtitles). The lossless track's dynamic range comes into play in the added sound effects, especially the sound of jets and drones flying overhead and occasional deep bass rumble of an explosion. The solemnly dignified soundtrack by Austin Wintory (Aftermath) has been carefully mixed to play under and behind the voices so that it establishes a mood without intruding or interfering with intelligibility.

A stereo surround track is also included in Dolby Digital 2.0.

The War Around Us Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Each section contains a "play all" function.

• Behind the Scenes (1080i; 1.78:1): These are less "behind the scenes" than raw footage. Some of the moments included here are also in the finished documentary. Most of the spoken exchanges are in Arabic, which is not subtitled.
• Ayman & Weesam [sic] (7:59)
• Ceasefire Announcement (3:07)
• Cooking (1:15)
• Dinner (1:22)
• Coming to the Supermarket (1:15)
• News Room (1:57)
• Sherine (2:25)
• Wessam Singing (1.33:1; 0:41)



• Deleted Scenes (1080p; 1.78:1): Most of these short deletions are additional excerpts from news broadcasts, but a few also contain further reflections from Sherine and Ayman.
• Ambulance (1:48)
• Ayman Live Phone Report (0:33)
• John Ging (1:05)
• Leaflets (0:36)
• Shifa Hospital (0:22)
• Surgical Strikes (0:34)
• The Siege (2.35:1; 2:14)
• UN (2:20)



• Mobile Phone Footage (1080i; 1.33:1): Some of this raw footage was included in the finished film. A comparison to the raw source reveals the extent of the digital cleanup.
• After War (0:52)
• Al Jazeera Cameraman (1:53)
• Gaza Streets (10:01)
• Night Drive (3:48)
• Roof Top (1:50)
• Sleeping in the Office (1:51)
• Tel Al-Hawa (3:41)
• War Is Over (2:42)
• Wessam Singing (0:41)

The War Around Us Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The closest thing to a political statement in The War Around Us occurs in a brief segment after the closing credits. Following their experience reporting from Gaza, Sherine and Ayman went on a speaking tour. After one engagement at a university in the U.S., they recorded a short conversation with a cab driver for whom the entire Israeli/Palestinian conflict was crystal clear and simplicity itself. Like the professional reporters they are, Sherine and Ayman offered no comment but only asked questions. It's a fascinating exchange, well worth hearing. The entire film and its Blu-ray presentation are highly recommended.