While [Basic Training] is open to individual analysis apart from the director's other work, a more sophisticated argument can be developed in terms of Wiseman's selection of material with clear affinities to concerns in his other films. The most certain connections in this case are between Basic Training and High School, although I think a more complex web of connections between all the films could be explored (dealing with, for instance, such things as the function of the church services in both Basic Training and Hospital). Wiseman is not only sensitive to the similarities between institutions, but also to the neat matrix of inverse influences—the ways institutions take on the functions and appearances of each other. In High School Wiseman repeatedly points up militaristic aspects of the high-school experience; in Basic Training he emphasizes the high-schoollike aspects of the training process…. [They] come to be seen as...