Paradox: we accept $80 million dollars (say) to recreate the horrors of war in a fictional setting as morally acceptable but would be outraged if the same scenes were shown from actual footage shot in reality. Worse in a way, we accept millions of dollars as a legitimate investment in a product which makes a profit from our paying to see it as entertainment. Further, at the Oscar ceremony in March, we may see one or other of the talented people involved in this movie clad in evening dress making some connection between this profitable product and real events in Iraq. And the weirdest thing about that is that many of the men and women risking their lives daily in Iraq will be pleased if that happens. I went unsuspectingly to maybe my 100th or more war movie in a life-long love of movies and ended up in a moral quagmire. My war movie Damascus perhaps. I only inflict some of this subjectivity on you because it seems to me relevant to the process of reviewing and to movies taken seriously as an art form trying to express something about the world. The all too real world.

It’s not my first qualm about such things: I was very uneasy about the ‘fictional’ recreation of unspeakable events in both Schindler’s List and The Pianist. These were more obviously justified than say Jarhead because both Spielberg and Polanski, if anyone does, have a right to remind us of the holocaust. Yet then, as now, something unsettles me about the very idea of ‘acting’ out such events. Though it runs directly against my view of art, I almost want to say only a rigorously documentary form shows proper respect for the people whose real horror is depicted. There is something aesthetically blind and morally obscene about dramatising the unspeakable.

It is curious that Jarhead should re-awaken these feelings. There is no overt glorification of war here. Indeed in many ways quite the opposite in that the brutalising brainwashing of young men to turn them into empty-headed (jarheads) killing machines, regarded as the essential training to keep them alive and effective in combat, is edgily depicted. Kubrick country with Full Metal Jacket. We see Jake Gyllenhaal’s Anthony Swofford from whose book on the Kuwait war this film is based, in, but not entirely of, all the mindless, macho ugliness of marine training and combat. We see him both drawn to and repulsed by this intensity of masculine comradeship bred of unity of purpose, intimate proximity and shared fear of random, violent death. The madness and total irrationality, yet inexorable logic of war is put over well. And yet. And yet. I see little in this film that would comfort or ring true to family and friends of brave serving men and women. As a reviewer I feel able to offer a view of movies because I relate them to a world I share and have a sense of their artistic truth. The trouble with war (and indeed the holocaust) is not just that I have not experienced either but that to appreciate what people who have, say about these experiences, is to realise that I cannot possibly understand them.

The taboo about showing actual appalling war footage on TV is sanitised as human respect for the death or dying of those depicted. Yet would not forcing ourselves to confront the reality that has led to that horror and suffering, pay greater respect to its victims than distancing ourselves from it through movies or censorship? American Generals remarked post-Vietnam that you cannot conduct a war on prime-time TV. Just so.

As a modestly competitive man whose heart can be reluctantly stirred by the sight and sound of a marching pipe band, or the awesome, raw power of a fighter bomber on after-burner, I wonder whether we should leave the war films to women for a while. They after all bear within themselves for months, the new lives, each one precious and unique, that become so few years later, a statistic of a conflict many do not support and most do not understand.

We guys might with some merit spend the time freed up from making or watching war movies, or playing war games, in asking some pretty serious questions about what we do to our sons in the name of what we are pleased to call manhood. And we could do with some help from the women in our lives to do it. To end with another paradox: I am not sure that even anti-war films like Jarhead do not unwittingly and very subtly, glorify it by appealing to that guilty part of us that is excited by pipe bands and after-burners.

Hi Zettel,

I can't comment on Jarhead as I haven't seen it, but I think you make some excellent points here. I have very similar feelings about Schindler's List and the Pianist (I remember reading a damning essay on the former by David Mamet)and have heard it said that it would have better for Anne Frank's Diary to be burned rather than turned into a Broadway play.

It's a very complicated issue, and one with no easy answers, but thanks for raising it here.

Harry

Thanks Harry

Bruno Bettelheim also had some very interesting remarks about the Diary of Anne Frank.

Regards

Zettel

Yes, I agree with most of what you say here, except it didn't take much, if anything to turn these young men into unthinking brutes. As I saw it, there were pretty well anxious to start killing, and that right soon. You don't just wander into a marine recruitment office by acccident, do you, although that's what the 'hero' half tried to suggest with his 'I got lost on the way to college' explanation. That was the most unbelievable part of the film - where he was reading 'L'Etranger' by Camus and the group leader took it off him. Did he think the marine corps would be an intellectual challenge? I'd love to see how it was written in the book from which it was adapted. Truly brutalising, having your book thrown in the bin, I don't think. Were we really supposed to feel sorry for these men because they didn't get to shoot any Arabs, or were we supposed to believe it was only the army marine situations that gave them licence to behave like animals? Again, I don't think so. The scene where they were watching 'Apocalypse Now' and whooping at the famous 'Ride of the Valkyrie' helicopter scenes suggested they were already well hardened,and the connection between violence and sexual excitement was also very apparent - like where the general says he gets a hard on when the men shout out loudly enough about their lust for blood.
As a female , of course, I was sensitive to the way women were represented, as in the scenes of passing round photos and the eagerness to see their comrade's wife being unfaithful on video. I was hoping myself that a few would get wiped out. I don't know about help from women. Culling's about the only thing I could think of. I have these fantasies where we gradually cut the percentage of the male population to what is considered a 'safe' level - could be 25%, could be 10%,measuring it against the decline of violent crime, etc and every male has to be on licence, vouched for by some woman or other, and if he shows sign of maverick behaviour he gets the hormone injections until he calms down. Another fantasy involves men corralled in some big space with a high wire fence and left to fight it out amonsgst themselves with no civilians involved.

I thought the desert scenes with the oil wells burning were impressive, the best thing about the film, a kind of infernal summing up. The jargon used by the troops was entertaining; also the pacing was well-done, alternating action and waiting. The meeting with the camel troupe had real some real suspense, occasioned by use of space and special effects, and it was a good idea to have the TV footage of the young men giving patriotic platitudes when interviewed. Again, I was surprised there was no repercussion when our hero spoke his mind. I seem to remember the shit-bucket detail was awarded for something else - terrifying his mild-mannered tent-mate? I didn't believe the hero knew Arabic, though, or that he would have got off with a little light ribbing from his fellows. Some of the minor roles were well-acted, like that of the sergeant who genuinely liked his job, having the right degree of scariness. I couldn't help suspecting Jake Gyllenhaal took the role in case anyone should suspect he was a 'faggot', following 'Brokeback Mountain'. I didn't find him wholly convincing in either role, but maybe that's the fault of his very conventional good looks.

Sheila

Sheila

That men's atavistic tendencies towards violence are both in part genetic and certainly evolutionary is I guess fairly widely accepted. And no man can be comfortable that we are responsible for most of the violent abuse of both women, and God help us, children. And of course 99%+ of the rapes.

It is however a pernicious fallacy of our culture, given credence not least by psychoanalysis, that men (or women) are slaves to their instincts. Helpless before them. Our instincts, drives, notably sexual, are facts but surely it is only our actions for which we can and should be held responsible? The idea that we do not have a choice and are always 'victims' of our genes or even our environment is the philosophy of surrender and despair. And not really borne out by the facts. Even in joke to think that men are iredeemably recalcitrant and therefore must be physically or leaglly constrained is almost a subtle form of racism.

When I said we need to look at what we are doing to our boy children I meant not only what men are doing to them but also what their mothers do. My wife and I have raised a boy and a girl. Leaving their case aside as a private matter we have both seen the unmistakable tendency for boys to be excessively indulged especially, though not by any means just, by their mothers. Most boys know that to get round a problem with dad, mum is the best place to go. This isn't a case of always blaming the woman but just to suggest that despite all the hype from the 60's onwards we have only just scratched the surface of the gender issue. And for my money that is crucially an issue for men and women in relationship not separately.

And the trends are not encouraging: just this week we hear that 14 year-old Chelsea O'Mahoney asked David Morley as he was being kicked to death by her chums, to smile for her mobile phone camera - and then went and kicked him in the head herself. The growth of the 'laddette' culture is there to see. I am troubled that human beings can behave so despicably not just that most of them, so far, tend to be men.

Military training is a form of brainwashing and can work very quickly. But in a world where the innocents of Sarajevo, Kosovo, Darfur, etc etc etc can only be rescued from oppression or death by some form of honourable miltary intervention, we have to face some pretty perplexing issues.

Thanks for the thoughtful comments. Big issues indeed.

Regards

Zettel