First Stripes: New addition to NFB's free streaming archive spotlights how Canadians do boot camp

Looking for some CanCon for your self-isolation theatre? The NFB has more that 4,000 titles available to stream for free at NFB.ca. New shorts and features, like this one, are being added regularly.

 By Linda Barnard

Rating: B 

There’s no lip gloss in the Canadian Armed Forces. Well, maybe just a little.

Jean-François Caissy’s 2018 documentary First Stripes tracks a group of young Quebecers as they move from civilian life to military (which may or may not eventually involve combat) through their 12-week basic training program.

The doc, originally titled Premières armes, bowed at the Berlin International Film Festival before screening at Hot Docs two years ago. It starts streaming on NFB.ca April 6.

It took a year for Caissy to get “carte blanche” access to follow a class of male and female recruits for the third part of his five-documentary series exploring the stages of life.

Canadian Armed Forces recruits start the transition from civilian life in Jean-François Caissy’s First Stripes

Here, he observes a sizable group of young women and men who are resolute about making changes in their lives as they learn to act as a unit, rather than individuals.

First Stripes opens with a long tracking shot that follows the marching graduates on final parade inside a CAF base. Families take photos and videos of the newly minted soldiers, the marching band bringing up the rear.

They’re introduced onscreen through induction interviews with their superior officers. The majority of the recruits are in their early 20s. Some have families. When asked why they’ve signed up, several point to the desire for challenge, or carrying on family tradition. “I like excitement,” says one. Strangely, they’re also asked about their parents’ current marital status.

Caissy avoids narration. Rather than taking the typical doc path of focusing on a handful of individuals to tell a story, just about every trainee gets screen time, which gives the film scope, if not depth. I occasionally lost track of who was who and my interest waned as a result. But maybe the strange sense of randomness within structured military life was Caissy’s point.

I want to know more about some of them, like what happened to the soldier who wedges himself under his cot one morning because he’s feeling sick?   

Hollywood has a fondness for break ’em to make ’em military movies, dramas that turn on torturous basic training with a focus on humiliation. That may be the only exposure many of us have into the process. Think Jarhead, GI Jane, An Officer and A Gentleman and my favourite, the 1970 made-for-TV movieThe Tribe, where Darren McGavin’s drill sergeant goes nose-to-nose with Vietnam draftees, chiefly a laid-back hippie played by Jan-Michael Vincent. 

First Stripes shows, shall we say, a more Canadian side of basic training, where an occasional tear is tolerated but lying isn’t. Female recruits are reminded to go easy on the makeup, yet one who complains of sexist language is told, in essence, to suck it up.

Caissy gets it right in a perfect scene involving a trainer who uses ballet-like exaggerated movements to show recruits how to don a gas mask. But there’s none of that elegance seen in the repeated marching drill, where the exaggerated stomp and sharp right turn eludes some. 

The focus from commanding officers is on discipline and ritual rather than yelling, although one can barely keep it together as recruits fumble to set up their shelter tents on a bivouac. His hollering about their “f------ hoochies” soon becomes unintentionally, yet enjoyably, comic.

Caissy focuses the camera on the trainees’ faces in most of these dressing-down exchanges, rather than the man barking the orders or delivering the lectures (all the superiors are males). The approach keeps attention on the recruits, a reminder that this is their story.

Back at the barracks, the recruits stretch out on their bunks and call home. One soldier complains to his mom about the worst part of his bivouac. They had to clean themselves with baby wipes. The horror of moist towelettes. Not what you’d ever hear in a Hollywood version of the basic training experience. 

First Stripes. Directed by Jean-François Caissy. Streaming free at NFB.ca beginning April 6.