The Messenger uncovers what has been hidden, exposes an invisible link between the dead and the living, the battlefield and the homeland, and probably most important, between the illusion that war will someday end and the reality that war never ends for some.
It creates an illusion of war games isolating the drones' controllers, national military commanders and politicians in their offices in London or Washington from the real violence and confusion on the ground in Afghanistan.
Max Rodenbeck helped to destroy that illusion: "The war is indirectly responsible, in many ways, for the economic crash in 2007.
It finally exposed the illusion that wars could be led at arm's length.
He cares deeply about valor and patriotism, he said, but has never had any illusions about war.
He says some people have illusions about war: "It's like, we go in, do it and come out.
By 1917 the short-war illusion was being usurped by a long-war one, with governments foreseeing a struggle dragging on into 1920, while the private letters of ordinary soldiers and civilians betrayed doubts it would ever end.
We should have no illusion that this war will end neatly, whatever we do.
The dances are a step back into Newport's age of illusion, before World War I, the advent of income taxes and the Wall Street collapse of 1929, which halted that age of conspicuous consumption.
For two hours the Fox show — though it acknowledged several times that soldiers, not football players, were the real heroes — gave us the illusion that the war and the game were the same.
