When Army chaplain Justin Roberts sought to make sense of his experiences at war in Afghanistan, it was the life and legacy of another chaplain — Medal of Honor recipient Emil Kapaun, who died in Korean captivity — that pulled him back from the brink and gave him a new purpose.
That’s the central conceit behind “Fighting Spirit: A Combat Chaplain’s Journey,” which opened in 150 theaters nationwide on Nov. 8.
Produced by the Catholic media company Paulist Productions, the 72-minute documentary grabbed the attention of A-list actor Chris Pratt, who signed on as an executive producer and promoted the project from his social media accounts.
The film, though, ventures well beyond the experiences of a single chaplain. In a series of poignant vignettes, it pays tribute to a spectrum of faith leaders in uniform, from the “Four Chaplains” who went down with the SS Dorchester, sacrificing their lives while comforting and helping rescue other passengers; to Charlie Liteky, who carried 20 soldiers to safety in Vietnam, but later renounced his Medal of Honor in protest.
It’s almost as if the filmmakers, with one shot to highlight chaplains on a national stage, couldn’t bring themselves to leave any story out.
The result can feel busy and meandering at times, as Roberts, the ostensible narrator, comes in and out of focus. But the creators of “Fighting Spirit” have a point: the stories of chaplains, those uniformed pastors and leaders who deploy to conflict but carry no weapons, are not as well known as they should be.
“The second that we forget about the sacrifices that were made, and we don’t learn those lessons, a part of our nation’s spirit dies,” Roberts, 44, told Military Times.
Billed as a co-director on the film, Roberts served as an Army chaplain from 2009-2015, deploying with the 101st Airborne Division to Afghanistan in 2010. The footage he captured with the division’s legendary 2/327th “No Slack” battalion would seed his first documentary project, “No Greater Love,” released in 2015.
The new film opens on Roberts at home with his family more than half a decade later, still at loose ends and sometimes despairing from his experience in combat with a battalion that sustained troublingly high suicide rates.
“My goal was to be there with them in the fight while they were facing the enemy,” Roberts says of his soldiers in the film, “so that whenever they faced the internal fight, they might be able to come to me.”
Amid this soul-searching, Roberts sees news: Kapaun’s remains, long missing, have been identified at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu. The legendary chaplain was to be returned to his Wichita, Kansas, hometown for a September 2021 funeral vigil and burial. Roberts decides to find meaning in the moment and travel from his home in Lake Charles, Louisiana, to attend the ceremony.
From interviews with those who suffered in the prisoner-of-war camp alongside Kapaun, the film provides a clearer picture of his heroism. Fellow troops recall how Kapaun worked tirelessly to raise the spirits of other prisoners, volunteering to attend every burial and returning with the clothing of the deceased to distribute to the most needy survivors. They describe a man who instilled not only hope, but also dignity in his comrades.
“Father could turn a mud hut into a cathedral by walking into it,” one man memorably says.
Roberts told Military Times he was astounded by the packed-out Hartman Arena in Park City, Kansas, filled to capacity with those paying tribute. Footage of the horse-drawn caisson with Kapaun’s remains traveling down a street lined with unbroken rows of American flags makes up one of the most moving scenes of the film.
“I knew his story, but I didn’t realize that everybody else knew his story too,” Roberts said. “And the heartfelt gratitude that I saw from those people brought me to tears.”
Film director Richard Hull described the discovery of Kapaun’s remains as an unexpected development that took place as he was developing a documentary intended to tell chaplains’ stories.
He likened the evolution of “Fighting Spirit” to that in the Oscar-winning documentary “My Octopus Teacher,” which was originally envisioned as a nature film.
In that film, “it turns out [filmmaker Craig Foster] was going through something in his own life, and they went and interviewed him, and they wove those two [stories] together,” Hull said. “And we kind of took some inspiration from that, and we wove Justin’s journey through the journey of these other stories that had inspired him. And I think that’s really where the movie kind of found its heartbeat.”
Hull described Pratt as a personal friend who quickly signed on to support the film after hearing about it.
“I mean, this project checks a lot of boxes for Chris,” Hull said. “He’s a very vocal military supporter. He’s a very faith-forward guy. He’s somebody that really appreciates good storytelling. And these are surely a lot of good stories, and stories that I think have never been told.”
The film also has support from the military, with Col. Brandon Moore, chief of recruiting and accessions for the Army Chaplain Corps, serving as a co-producer.
Moore was part of a group representing the film who traveled to the Vatican for a 2023 special first screening for Pope Francis. Though a Protestant chaplain himself, the moment moved him.
“[Kapaun] died in a prisoner of war camp, and he never got to meet the Pope or go to the Vatican or be appreciated for what he’s done,” Moore said. “And I felt like in some way … I was doing this for [him].”
As for Roberts, his experience motivated him to take on new projects, including one that took him to Ukraine’s Donbas region for a year for an upcoming documentary.
“I can use my camera to do the ministry I feel called to do, and I can still serve and love people in this way,” Roberts said. “And really, what this enables me to do is to reach millions.”
More information about the film and local screenings can be found at https://www.fightingspiritfilm.com/.
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