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'Baghdad High' dark but life-affirming

High school is much the same the world over, but if you think it's an unpleasant experience here, try spending your senior year in Baghdad.

The new HBO documentary "Baghdad High" has the look and feel of like-minded U.S. reality shows, such as R.J. Cutler's "American High." Yet it's one thing when a typical high school student thinks the world is against him, and quite another when evidence such as bombings, gunfire, power outages and potential kidnappings and the threat of civil war presents itself to drive the point home.

Produced and directed by Ivan O'Mahoney and Laura Winter, "Baghdad High" debuts at 8 p.m. Monday on the premium-cable channel; it takes a familiar approach to studying the 2006-2007 school year of four seniors at Tariq bin Zaid High School in one of the more embattled areas of Iraq. It shoots the four boys at the school and in their (increasingly infrequent) social outings, while also giving them hand-held cameras to document their day-to-day lives with video diaries.

That four boys are still seen insulting each other, dancing with joy and worrying over girls - like almost any U.S. high school student - makes it all the more touching when it's contrasted against the backdrop of nearby explosions and shootings and the assassination of Saddam Hussein in the months just before U.S. forces launched the surge of troop reinforcements.

The four are familiar types of a sort one might find at any suburban high school. Hayder is an aspiring songwriter, quoting Tupac and studying the construction of a Britney Spears pop hit. Anmar is a Christian, sensitive to his surroundings, worried about what will become of his family if an outright civil war breaks out - and also fretting about his girlfriend. Ali and Mohammed are mismatched best friends: Ali tall and assertive, Mohammed shorter and a bit of a class clown.

They insult each other like typical teen boys, but with a frame of reference unique to Iraq. "If Chemical Ali had really wanted to destroy the North," Ali says, "he should have fired a rocket with Mohammed's socks in it."

Yet the difference between what we might regard as "normal" and the state of affairs in Baghdad is most poignant when Anmar worries about how he hasn't heard from his girlfriend in days. Is she ignoring him, did she dump him - or is there some far more awful explanation?

"I hope nothing has happened to her," he says.

Considering that October 2006 was the most dangerous month for Iraqi citizens since the 2003 U.S. invasion - with almost 3,000 dying in the conflict - there is abundant cause for such concerns.

"All this shooting," Hayder says, "the country is in a mess." Yet he risks going out after dark to walk down the road 500 yards to a friend's house to play music. Strumming and humming his way through "Hotel California," the line, "This could be heaven or this could be hell," resonates in a way the Eagles never dreamed of.

"I feel like I'm in prison," Hayder says later on. "If you go out you get kidnapped."

Feeling the same sort of isolation, Mohammed befriends a mouse with an affection not shared by his mother. "Not much news," he says matter-of-factly into the video camera, "only Mom bought mouse poison."

Ali and his family leave Baghdad to seek sanctuary in the Kurdish regions to the north, leaving Mohammed even more bereft. Ali eventually reconnects, but amid the pleasantly pastoral rural setting he says it feels "boring" without the explosions and the gunfire.

Through it all these boys find a way to abide and endure. They joke, they struggle with homework, they dance in preparation for Mohammed's 18th birthday, they cram for graduation exams. It says something about the resilience of the human spirit that the high school experience seems so familiar even amid the intense armed conflict.

Culled from 300 hours of footage, "Baghdad High" has been edited down to an 80-minute finished product that is whimsical, natural, exotic, evocative and ultimately as despairing as it is life-affirming.

As HBO continues its summer Documentary Films series, this is one that shouldn't be missed - and non-subcribers can no doubt expect to find it at the video store in the coming months. See it and ask anew if the U.S. invasion of Iraq has been worth it for all concerned.

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