Jon Shenk and Bonni Cohen‘s at times emotionally overwhelming documentary gets its title via a quote from “The Odyssey” that opens the film.
“By now, I am used to suffering. I have endured so much in waves and war. Let this next adventure follow.”
The Navy SEALs who are the subjects of “In Waves and War” aren’t just used to suffering. Many long thought that bearing the emotional cost of suffering was their only option. Multiple tours in Afghanistan and Iraq over years left unseen scars as wall as visible ones, and PTSD can be so intractable an enemy, despite multiple therapies and prescription drugs, that a lot are left to think that just “bearing it” is all they can do.
Shenk and Cohen‘s film makes a powerful case that there may be another option: Psychedelic drugs, not approved for use in the U.S., may help break through these vets’ psychological barriers and offer a reset. It makes the case so forcefully that there are moments “In Waves and War” almost feels like a commercial: No downside to these drugs, ibogaine and 5-MeO-DMT, is mentioned other than that they may help “crack you open” and face your unresolved traumas and guilt and grief directly — and then it’s up to you lay a new foundation to live a different way after treatment, or you might revert to the way you were before. It’s unclear in the film just how advisable this treatment — which usually involves vets traveling to a clinic in Mexico to receive it — is for everyone. And maybe it isn’t for everyone. But the key is that it offers hope.
The SEALs we meet in “In Waves and War” had each reached a point where they’d given up on hope. Their stories of their years and years fighting overseas, being away from their families for 300+ days a year, and witnessing unspeakable horrors, makes up the spine of the film. These are riveting stories. There’s Marcus Capone, described a couple times as looking like an NFL linebacker, but whose wife says had become “a monster” upon his return from multiple tours of duty. He becomes the leading evangelist for psychedelic treatments for veterans through his foundation VETS (Veterans Exploring Treatment Solutions), and is a producer on the film. D.J. Shipley movingly talks about how he met his wife, Patsy, who had been widowed in her early 20s when her first husband, Danny Dietz, was killed in 2005 in the Operation Red Wings crash in Afghanistan. Shipley wanted to visit Dietz’s grave to “ask him permission” to court Patsy. But by the end of almost 20 years in the SEALs, he had nearly wrecked the life he had built with her.
And finally, there’s Matty Roberts, whose journey to Mexico to receive his first treatment is captured in “In Waves and War.” Matty suffered a major wound in his arm during one firefight and was convinced, initially, that his arm had been blown off altogether. With animations from London-based commercial animation company Studio AKA, each of these vets’ traumas come to life. The animation style is fluid and boundary-less, images just made out as they morph into something else: A helicopter hovering over a dusty landscape; a row of SEALs in nightvision goggles approaching a target; fire exchanged over a tractor tire. The images are as hazy as memory, and a very effective way of getting inside the heads of these vets — who otherwise tell their stories direct-to-camera, and are never less than compelling in doing so.
The animation particularly hammers home the individualized experiences of going through the psychedelic treatment: For Marcus, it felt like he was flying through a void with memories from his life floating like a swirl of Polaroids around him; for Matty, he ended up face to face staring down a version of himself, as if learning to confront and let go of his own ego.
It’s all very meaningful to watch and never less than engaging, even if “In Waves and War” comes across like a pharmaceutical infomercial at times as much as a film. Fundamentally, Shenk and Cohen are trying to argue for a particular solution here, and it might be promising indeed, but it’s also presented as a little too much of a silver-bullet for the issues they’ve identified. A truer, more valuable review of “In Waves and War” is one that hopefully will be written in a medical journal rather than IndieWire. At least it offers hope to these American heroes that there can be more to life than “being used to suffering.”
Grade: B-
“In Waves and War” world premiered at the 2024 Telluride Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
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