Baghdad E.R.

Baghdad E.R. (premieres Sun., May 21, 8 p.m., HBO) At one point in Jon Alpert and Matthew O'Neill's gut-churning documentary Baghdad E.R. , a nurse looks over the body of a soldier who has just been brought into the 86th Combat Support Hospital in Baghdad's Green Zone and calmly remarks that the wounded man has a "rubber knee." In other words, the impact of an explosion has pulverized the bones in his leg, leaving nothing but pulp. The chilling colloquialism of the nurse's diagnosis makes clear this is not the first time she's seen such an injury, nor does she expect it to be the last.

"The horrors of what man can do to man are visualized right here," an Army colonel announces near the beginning of the film, and Baghdad E.R. is unsparing in its depiction of the physical damage wreaked on the bodies of U.S. soldiers, a higher percentage of whom will return home alive but injured than in any previous war. Alpert and O'Neill don't follow the soldiers home, and they don't show the attacks and accidents that lead to their injuries—they keep their lenses focused tightly and mercilessly on the operating theater. This is tough stuff, to be sure, which is why, according to The New York Times, Army officials "scaled back their planned participation" in advance screenings of the film, and then issued a warning to soldiers and their families that viewing the film might "trigger mental health problems." One need only think of the way the current administration has constantly tried to hide the true toll of the war in Iraq to think that something other than concern for the soldiers' mental well-being is at stake here.

Baghdad E.R. isn't perfect—the directors sometimes use incongruous bursts of electric guitar music to speed the movie along, as if they're not quite sure the audience can take it. And the somewhat artificial nature of the movie's constrained location prompts more questions than it answers. But then, getting the audience to ask questions is probably just what the filmmakers have in mind.