Is a movie about war veterans necessarily a war movie? In the case of The Messenger, the answer could be both yes and no.

Director Oren Moverman’s film takes place on the home front, doesn’t feature any battle sequences and is more about what he calls “the emotional battlefield.”

The film follows two casualty notification officers — Will (Ben Foster), a veteran of the Iraq war, and Tony (Woody Harrelson), who served in Operation Desert Storm — who are assigned to initially break the news of soldiers’ deaths to their next of kin.

Oren Moverman

“Clearly the backdrop for this movie is the war. In this case, it’s the Iraq war, but it really could be any war that the United States has been involved with,” Moverman said by phone from New York. “The perspective of the movie is from the people who live with the consequences of the decision to go to war. It’s very much a home front movie.”

At the same time, Moverman said, he and co-writer Alessandro Camon wanted to approach the film from a more universal perspective as it relates to the grieving process.

“We feel like, in a way, unfortunately we all get notified about the death of a loved one,” Moverman said. “You don’t have to be in the military to identify with that sort of immediate grief and that kind of news. The movie is really about how you get back to life after having suffered pain and loss, which is something we all do.”

The film tracks the two officers through emotional encounters with grieving widows and stunned siblings whose loved ones were killed in combat in Iraq. They deliver the news by the book, without displaying any outward emotion or sympathy, except toward Olivia (Samantha Morton), a vulnerable widow-turned-single mother who develops a liking toward Will. Eventually, the stone-faced exterior for both men begins to crumble as an inner hostility is revealed.

Moverman, a former soldier in the Israeli army, has co-written screenplays for Married Life and I’m Not There, Todd Haynes’ biopic of Bob Dylan. He makes his feature directoral debut with The Messenger. He said the idea for the film came a few years back, when he and Camon were discussing politics.

“We talked about the people who live with the consequences of the war, and how they’re not part of the national dialogue,” he said. “What we wanted to do is to shine a light, in our own small way, on those people and tell a few intimate stories from within.”

Moverman said the characters in the film are mostly composites derived from research, both online and in person. The co-writers combed through soldiers’ blogs and studied the actual manual for casualty notification officers.

The production wound up getting the full support of the U.S. Army, who allowed Moverman and his crew to film at Fort Dix in New Jersey. They also had access to Walter Reed Army Medical Center and to a casualty notification center in Arlington, Va., where the actors also talked to real-life officers and soldiers’ families. Several military personnel also appear in the film as extras.

One of the main goals, Moverman said, was to forgo politics and present an even-handed look at these characters, who have one of the most difficult jobs away from the battlefield.

“We wanted to make a very respectful film,” he said. “The subject matter is exploitative in a sense. You’re going into moments of extreme grief and shock, so we had to be very gentle and very respectful of these characters. It’s a very difficult job to do. It was important for us to get it as close as possible to reality.”

The Messenger is currently playing at the Magnolia in Dallas.

TODD JORGENSON can be reached at 940-566-6871. His e-mail address is tjorgenson@dentonrc.com.