reece_elite
14-Jan-06, 08:09pm
Waiting for the war
Stephen Applebaum
January 14, 2006
THE US and its allies scored a clear military victory over Saddam Hussein's forces during the first Gulf War and many in the US who went to see Sam (American Beauty) Mendes's adaptation of ex-marine sniper Anthony Swofford's memoir, Jarhead, expected to leave the cinema feeling uplifted by seeing a job well done. Here was a film, surely, that would make them forget their Baghdad blues, if only for a couple of hours, and allow them to believe unequivocally that their boys were the good guys, putting their lives on the line for a worthwhile cause.
What they got instead was the soldiers' daily grind in which the men on the ground see almost no action. Swofford, 20, played by Jake Gyllenhaal - Heath Ledger's lover in Brokeback Mountain - watches and waits in feverish anticipation of firing the perfect shot. Meanwhile, he endures searing temperatures and mind-numbing boredom, his sanity seeping out of him like sweat.
But when Operation Desert Shield becomes Operation Desert Storm, air power renders the sweltering soldiers virtually redundant. Deflation, not elation, is the end result.
According to columnist Brendan Miniter, who watched Jarhead in Brooklyn, "viewers were streaming out of the theatre even before the film was over". Reflecting on the American reaction to Jarhead, Gyllenhaal says, "the film was marketed in such a way, I think, that people believed it to be one thing and it actually ended up being another thing. And that other thing was a film that's filled with a tremendous ambiguity."
This ambiguity has brought attacks from the Right, who claim that the film could be damaging to the morale of US troops serving in Iraq, and from the Left, who say that it is neither overtly political enough, nor unambiguously anti-war enough. Some critics have even written, though not always negatively, that Jarhead is a war movie without a war.
Jarhead raises questions about our expectations of what a war film is and what it should do. Just because the men in the film do not see action, does that mean that Jarhead is not a war film? The truth is that even though they do not engage the enemy, they are affected by the imminence of battle, the closeness of death, and the drawn-out expectation of getting to employ their training. "The war that they have is a war in their mind," says Gyllenhaal.
"That was the war for soldiers who fought in the first Gulf War, and that's very special to them. I think people just expect that blood is war and that somehow even though they're disturbed by those ideas and seeing those things, it's conventional and they understand it. They know somehow that when they go into a movie, that's what they're going to see. So it makes people feel very uncomfortable when they don't walk out having seen any of that."
Although Mendes fails to contextualise the film politically and historically (and therefore to make an explicit link with, or comment about, the ongoing troubles in Iraq), he contextualises it culturally by placing it in ironic relation to earlier, well-known war films. This is true to the book, in which the soldiers view themselves and what they do through the prism of classics such as Full Metal Jacket, Apocalypse Now and The Deer Hunter.
To the soldier, writes Swofford, all war movies are pro-war, no matter what the intentions of the film-maker. "Filmic images of death and carnage are pornography for the military man; with film you are stroking his cock, tickling his balls with the pink feather of history, getting him ready for his first f---."
As in the book, we see Swofford/Gyllenhaal and his comrades watching the famous helicopter attack sequence from Apocalypse Now with the same orgasmic feverishness as if they were watching a skin flick. Mendes's film, however, frustrates this pornographic charge by not offering images whose "magic brutality", according to Swofford, appears to soldiers as a celebration of the "terrible and despicable beauty" of their fighting skills. In this regard, Jarhead is a postmodern, anti-war movie.
But there is an almost priapic tone to the film. Swofford, in particular, is like a horny virgin desperate to lose his cherry in battle (in one scene he dances around naked but for a strategically placed Santa hat). The banter between the men is predominantly sexual, with a clear link between sex and violence.
"What I have discovered about the military, in my short and peripheral experience of it," says Gyllenhaal, "is that they harness those feelings and focus them towards an end. They give them meaning through missions. I think that is the intention of the film. I think that for a lot of people, it creates a very ambiguous and also a very varied response, as it should. I don't think there's any other intention besides that."
The problem for the soldiers in the first Gulf War, according to Jarhead, was that the waiting increased their frustration and hence their volatility. "If you're trained to kill and you don't get to go and kill other people, then you end up trying to kill each other," suggests Gyllenhaal, who identified with the men's feelings. "I don't think you have to do much as a young man to create frustration. You know what I mean? Any type of frustration: be it mental or sexual or whatever. That's why I wanted to do the role. I felt so strongly about playing it because it is a time in my life where I feel these feelings of frustration and anger, and that feeling of wanting to punch your fist through a wall and not understanding why."
Watching Jarhead is a queasy and vaguely confusing experience. One could argue that Mendes's avoidance of overt political engagement, compared with films such as Syriana, The Constant Gardener and Good Night, And Good Luck, makes it feel hollow and opportunistic. On the other hand, one can perhaps see in the men's behaviour in the film the seeds of the kind of abuse that took place recently at Abu Ghraib. Indeed, it is hard not to think of the shocking pictures of Iraqi prisoners forced to perform simulated sex acts by their American captors while watching a scene where the soldiers comically simulate sex with one another during a football game in the desert. The film also gives a sense of why men who have been trained to kill do not always make the best peacekeepers. Troubling questions, then. And a troubling film.
Jarhead opens in Australia on February 9.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,17780941%255E16947,00.html
I read the book, its not very political more about everythign going on in Swafford's head and his time in the Marine Corps than what he goes through on the battlefield. It was funny in some parts and pretty interesting and unique compared to other war books although apparently it has a few embellishments.
Im looking forward to seeing the movie. Has anyone seen it yet? If so what did they think?
Stephen Applebaum
January 14, 2006
THE US and its allies scored a clear military victory over Saddam Hussein's forces during the first Gulf War and many in the US who went to see Sam (American Beauty) Mendes's adaptation of ex-marine sniper Anthony Swofford's memoir, Jarhead, expected to leave the cinema feeling uplifted by seeing a job well done. Here was a film, surely, that would make them forget their Baghdad blues, if only for a couple of hours, and allow them to believe unequivocally that their boys were the good guys, putting their lives on the line for a worthwhile cause.
What they got instead was the soldiers' daily grind in which the men on the ground see almost no action. Swofford, 20, played by Jake Gyllenhaal - Heath Ledger's lover in Brokeback Mountain - watches and waits in feverish anticipation of firing the perfect shot. Meanwhile, he endures searing temperatures and mind-numbing boredom, his sanity seeping out of him like sweat.
But when Operation Desert Shield becomes Operation Desert Storm, air power renders the sweltering soldiers virtually redundant. Deflation, not elation, is the end result.
According to columnist Brendan Miniter, who watched Jarhead in Brooklyn, "viewers were streaming out of the theatre even before the film was over". Reflecting on the American reaction to Jarhead, Gyllenhaal says, "the film was marketed in such a way, I think, that people believed it to be one thing and it actually ended up being another thing. And that other thing was a film that's filled with a tremendous ambiguity."
This ambiguity has brought attacks from the Right, who claim that the film could be damaging to the morale of US troops serving in Iraq, and from the Left, who say that it is neither overtly political enough, nor unambiguously anti-war enough. Some critics have even written, though not always negatively, that Jarhead is a war movie without a war.
Jarhead raises questions about our expectations of what a war film is and what it should do. Just because the men in the film do not see action, does that mean that Jarhead is not a war film? The truth is that even though they do not engage the enemy, they are affected by the imminence of battle, the closeness of death, and the drawn-out expectation of getting to employ their training. "The war that they have is a war in their mind," says Gyllenhaal.
"That was the war for soldiers who fought in the first Gulf War, and that's very special to them. I think people just expect that blood is war and that somehow even though they're disturbed by those ideas and seeing those things, it's conventional and they understand it. They know somehow that when they go into a movie, that's what they're going to see. So it makes people feel very uncomfortable when they don't walk out having seen any of that."
Although Mendes fails to contextualise the film politically and historically (and therefore to make an explicit link with, or comment about, the ongoing troubles in Iraq), he contextualises it culturally by placing it in ironic relation to earlier, well-known war films. This is true to the book, in which the soldiers view themselves and what they do through the prism of classics such as Full Metal Jacket, Apocalypse Now and The Deer Hunter.
To the soldier, writes Swofford, all war movies are pro-war, no matter what the intentions of the film-maker. "Filmic images of death and carnage are pornography for the military man; with film you are stroking his cock, tickling his balls with the pink feather of history, getting him ready for his first f---."
As in the book, we see Swofford/Gyllenhaal and his comrades watching the famous helicopter attack sequence from Apocalypse Now with the same orgasmic feverishness as if they were watching a skin flick. Mendes's film, however, frustrates this pornographic charge by not offering images whose "magic brutality", according to Swofford, appears to soldiers as a celebration of the "terrible and despicable beauty" of their fighting skills. In this regard, Jarhead is a postmodern, anti-war movie.
But there is an almost priapic tone to the film. Swofford, in particular, is like a horny virgin desperate to lose his cherry in battle (in one scene he dances around naked but for a strategically placed Santa hat). The banter between the men is predominantly sexual, with a clear link between sex and violence.
"What I have discovered about the military, in my short and peripheral experience of it," says Gyllenhaal, "is that they harness those feelings and focus them towards an end. They give them meaning through missions. I think that is the intention of the film. I think that for a lot of people, it creates a very ambiguous and also a very varied response, as it should. I don't think there's any other intention besides that."
The problem for the soldiers in the first Gulf War, according to Jarhead, was that the waiting increased their frustration and hence their volatility. "If you're trained to kill and you don't get to go and kill other people, then you end up trying to kill each other," suggests Gyllenhaal, who identified with the men's feelings. "I don't think you have to do much as a young man to create frustration. You know what I mean? Any type of frustration: be it mental or sexual or whatever. That's why I wanted to do the role. I felt so strongly about playing it because it is a time in my life where I feel these feelings of frustration and anger, and that feeling of wanting to punch your fist through a wall and not understanding why."
Watching Jarhead is a queasy and vaguely confusing experience. One could argue that Mendes's avoidance of overt political engagement, compared with films such as Syriana, The Constant Gardener and Good Night, And Good Luck, makes it feel hollow and opportunistic. On the other hand, one can perhaps see in the men's behaviour in the film the seeds of the kind of abuse that took place recently at Abu Ghraib. Indeed, it is hard not to think of the shocking pictures of Iraqi prisoners forced to perform simulated sex acts by their American captors while watching a scene where the soldiers comically simulate sex with one another during a football game in the desert. The film also gives a sense of why men who have been trained to kill do not always make the best peacekeepers. Troubling questions, then. And a troubling film.
Jarhead opens in Australia on February 9.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,17780941%255E16947,00.html
I read the book, its not very political more about everythign going on in Swafford's head and his time in the Marine Corps than what he goes through on the battlefield. It was funny in some parts and pretty interesting and unique compared to other war books although apparently it has a few embellishments.
Im looking forward to seeing the movie. Has anyone seen it yet? If so what did they think?