It’s referred to as “development hell” – that period between when a script is optioned and when it gets a green light – an endless series of notes, meetings and rewrites when the original script falls prey to the whims of all the chefs involved with creating this particular soufflé.

Yet writer-director Oren Moverman says that, without that lengthy development, he wouldn’t haven been able to uncover the heart of “The Messenger” and create the compelling film it became. Nor would he have made his directorial debut with the film.

“Along the way, we stripped it down to its essence,” Moverman says.

“The Messenger,” which opened in limited release Nov. 13 and goes into wider release in the coming weeks, focuses on a young soldier, Will Montgomery (Ben Foster), wounded in the Iraq war and returned to duty stateside. He is assigned duty as a casualty notification officer, given the job of notifying the next-of-kin of those killed in the Iraq war and teamed with a veteran of the detail (played by Woody Harrelson).

The idea for the script originated with Moverman’s cowriter, producer Alessandro Camon: “He brought up the idea of casualty notification as an unseen part of the war – one of the parts that they all but made illegal to show, like they wouldn’t let the media show the returning bodies,” Moverman, an Israeli native, says. “That’s really when it started. We were off and running.”

Running a marathon, as it turned out: The film went through three other directors before it got made. Sydney Pollack worked with the writers, trying to use the milieu as the backdrop for a love story: “We did a complete draft and eventually came to a mutual agreement that it was not that kind of movie,” Moverman says.

The next director, Roger Michel, wanted to focus on the relationship between the two men. For a while, Ben Affleck was interested in directing. As they worked on the script with different directors, Moverman and Camon found it revealing itself as something they – not the directors – wanted to make.

“We took away the plot-driven thing and stayed with the emotional core,” Moverman says.

Eventually, it became clear that Moverman was the logical choice to direct. But the writer (“I’m Not There,” “Jesus’ Son”) had another film he was working on that he hoped to direct as his first film.

“I never lobbied to direct it,” Moverman says. “I had another picture I was going to direct. My initial reaction was no. I was trying to be a responsible screenwriter. It felt wrong to say I’ll take over and my writing partner’s role would be diminished. But he gave his blessing. Now I’m unable to go back to that other script I was going to direct.”

Once he agreed to direct, Moverman created a personal regimen to assure that he would bring his ‘A’ game to the set: “For the shoot, I stopped drinking coffee and alcohol,” he says. “I also made sure I slept six hours a night. Part of the job to me was being fresh and clear-headed. So I put myself through a certain discipline. It’s part of the job to have clarity. It was tough at the end of the day. I felt the challenge everyday. When did I restart? Immediately. You also have to enjoy life.”

Casualties of war have no politics, left or right – and that’s how Moverman felt about the soldiers delivering the messages of death.

“This film doesn’t have politics or an agenda, in terms of being pro-war or anti-war,” says Moverman, who served in the Israeli military before emigrating to the U.S. to break into the movie business. “People who look at it as a political statement don’t understand. These days, being in the army is a professional job. For a lot of people, there’s no other choice. A lot join patriotically because they’re moved by certain events. In this country, the world ‘political’ gets so confusing. The military is a little more sophisticated than that.”

Though the Iraq war is the backdrop for the film (which is set entirely on American soil), it’s not a film about the war itself. Nor does Moverman worry that the film will suffer the curse of the majority of films about Iraq – fiction or nonfiction – that have suffered a quick box-office death.

“I thought I’d just try to make a very good film and what will be will be,” he says. “Obviously, I couldn’t have made it if everyone thought there was no chance for it.

“Ultimately it is about marketing and how it’s presented, what the perception of it is. Some of those films had the perception of being about Hollywood politics. But this is not a political film, left or right. It’s a simple humanistic film.”

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