The film portion of the CMJ festival ended on a high note Friday with the New York premiere of The Messenger, an impressive directorial debut from Oren Moverman. Moverman, who co-wrote the screenplay with Alessandro Camon, noted in the Q&A session following the screening that a Vietnam veteran he had consulted during the filmmaking process told him that there were three stances about war: "anti-war, pro-war, and in war." The Messenger, Moverman explained, aimed for the "in war" perspective. That seems right, except that it's not the battlefield you might expect. The Messenger isn't really about Iraq or Afghanistan so much as wars of everyday life–the inescapable violence of loss, grief, and longing. (PHOTO: WOODY HARRELSON IN THE MESSENGER)

The film opens with Sergeant Will Montgomery (Ben Foster) returning from a tour of Iraq  with a bum right eye and a handful of medals. For the remaining three months of his enlistment, Montgomery is assigned to the casualty notification unit, or as his off-kilter supervisor Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson) calls it, "the angel of death squad." Stone has a strict formula for informing the relatives of deceased soldiers: recite the script, don't make physical contact, and never use euphemisms that could mean "not dead." The contrast between this official line and the messiness of human emotion is where The Messenger gets its electricity: while relatives scream, spit, and wail, the soldiers must be as unresponsive as statues. The movie benefits from strong performances across the board. Harrelson as Stone is deft and cunning, and Samantha Morton plays war widow Olivia Pitterson with a fascinating mixture of control and grace.