-Caveat Lector-
Begin forwarded message:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: September 13, 2007 4:46:28 PM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: It's Vietnam at Home, All Over Again
You can't make an anti-war movie -- that would be un-American
"Based on a Mark Boal investigative article, "Death and Dishonor,"
the film is a gritty fact-based drama about a career military
officer who searches for his soldier son who vanished in the
States. The youth, who went AWOL on returning from Baghdad, was
murdered in Georgia by members of his own platoon during a night
out 'partying.'
"We see how wars change a person’s perspective on what’s perceived
as normal ... In wartime, terrifying power --the right to kill as
they see fit— is given to teenagers who lack the maturity to deal
with the responsibility that goes along with such power ... This
movie is not just about these soldiers and the horrors they
experienced; it's also about their families at home, who will never
be the same again either, as a result of the war."
Calls for Charlize boycott
13/09/2007 22:46 - (SA)
http://www.news24.com/News24/Entertainment/Celebrities/
0,,2-1225-2108_2183204,00.html
Cape Town - Charlize Theron and Tommy Lee Jones' latest movie In
the Valley of Elah is to open in the US on Friday amid calls from
some war supporters to boycott the actors as it is believed to be
"anti-US" and "defaming US soldiers".
The film, directed by Oscar-winning Crash filmmaker Paul Haggis, is
based on a real 2003 case involving the stabbing death of Iraq war
veteran Spc Richard Davis after he returned from battle.
Surrounding the case were allegations the victim witnessed war-time
atrocities, and the convicted perpetrators suffered from extreme
stress disorders that were downplayed by officials.
In the movie Tommy Lee Jones plays the role of a former military
police investigator trying to find out why his son was brutally
murdered, whereas Charlize Theron plays a police detective who
helps in the investigation.
'Bin Laden cinema'
According to a news report on Wednesday in USA Today, conservative
columnist Debbie Schlussel labelled it "Bin Laden cinema" and
called for a boycott of the actors.
On her website she wrote: "the movie defames our troops as
murderous, drug-addicted, prostitute-patronising thugs who torture
wounded Iraqi civilians for fun and sport."
The conservative NewsMax.com also categorised the movie as an "anti-
war, anti-US flick".
However, according to USA Today some military bloggers such as
SgtStryker.com and PTSDcombat.blogspot.com, have praised it for
highlighting issues that are front-and-centre in military communities.
Jones told US Today he was not intimidated by the criticism, saying
he is "so ready for a fight he doubts there'll be much of one".
"The tactic of leading people into a war that doesn't make any
sense by telling them they are under attack, and if they raise any
objection they're unpatriotic, is a very old tactic. And it doesn't
intimidate me," he said.
Charlize Theron was quoted earlier as saying that she hoped the US
troops in Iraq could return home soon.
While promoting In The Valley of Elah at the Venice Film Festival,
the Oscar-winning star told the BBC: "Nothing would give me more
joy than to see them back in America. The soldiers are doing a
very, very important job and it's a dangerous one.
"Hopefully they can come back and be looked after, that's the least
we can do for them."
---------------
The War Once Home
‘In the Valley of Elah’ fights to reveal one of combat’s most
dismissed consequences
~ By MARK KEIZER ~
http://www.lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=6131&IssueNum=223
Photo by Lorey Sebastian
~ Another day to match his face: Hank (Tommy Lee Jones) gets
stonewalled by Pvt. Ortiez (Victor Wolf) ~
In a recent Bill O’Reilly radio show, the Levittown loudmouth was
kind enough to run down a list of upcoming films concerning the war
in Iraq. In O’Reilly’s opinion, Hollywood (the boulevard, the
industry, the state of mind) is overrun with – quoting George
Carlin – “commie fag junkies” plotting to anoint Osama bin Laden
program director at PBS while creating cross-media propaganda aimed
at destroying the American way of life. But until that blessed day,
Hollywood is busy minting a series of filmed entertainments whose
purpose is to turn public opinion against the war. Of course, this
is something currently being accomplished with every purchase of a
50-cent newspaper, not a $14 movie ticket. And with the newspaper,
you get the funnies.
Among the films O’Reilly ticked off are Brian De Palma’s Redacted,
based on the true story of the March 2006 rape and murder of an
Iraqi girl by a group of American GI’s, and the forthcoming
Rendition, about an Egyptian-born chemical engineer tortured by
U.S. government agents at one of those secret detention facilities
the liberal mainstream media is always blabbering about. Lastly, he
mentioned In the Valley of Elah, the new film by writer-director
Paul Haggis. The Canadian-born Haggis is the only person in the
history of the Oscars to write back-to-back Best Picture winners.
And if Million Dollar Baby and Crash (which he also directed)
taught us anything, it’s that Haggis is the least likely person to
throw a really cool children’s birthday party. (And that’s despite
having four kids.) After cutting his teeth writing for comedy
greats Norman Lear and Tracey Ullman, Haggis has transformed into a
self-serious writer-sometimes-director whose need to make Big
Statements threatens to elbow out all other considerations. In the
Valley of Elah, based on a Playboy investigative article by Mark
Boal, is a Big Statement mixed with a standard police procedural,
sprinkled with a dash of Costa-Gavras’s Missing – if Jack Lemmon’s
character was a former Army MP who occasionally pummeled the crap
out of soldiers half his age.
According to a March 2007 article in The New York Times, the
company newsletter of the Progressive Wacko Nutjob Left (Viva
Chavez!), 3,196 active-duty soldiers deserted the Army in 2006. A
soldier is classified a deserter if AWOL for more than 30 days. As
Haggis’s film opens, Hank Deerfield (Tommy Lee Jones, in one of his
best performances) gets the call that his son Mike has gone AWOL on
his first weekend back from Iraq. A quarter-century ago, when Jones
won a Best Actor Emmy as convicted killer Gary Gilmore in The
Executioner’s Song, he was already an old soul, whose cold, dark
eyes knew sorrow you would never understand. Here, Jones projects
Hank’s oft-required equanimity, one that isn’t so much devoid of
emotion, but suggestive of someone whose long-swallowed emotions
can’t afford to show themselves. In the striking minimalism of the
film’s early scenes, Haggis and Jones are perfectly in sync: The
stillness of Haggis’s camera matches Hank’s solemn preparations for
the two-day drive to Fort Rudd, the New Mexico base where Mike is
stationed. Hank’s abrupt departure barely warrants discussion with
wife Joan (Susan Sarandon), whose thin contributions still provide
some of the film’s emotional highpoints.
In New Mexico, Mike’s platoon buddies dodge Hank’s questions
regarding their comrade’s disappearance, and the local police are
callously unconcerned. So he mounts his own investigation with the
help of the only sympathetic ear he can find, detective Emily
Sanders (Charlize Theron). Hank’s grim determination draws us to
him, but Emily is mechanical, ill-fitting, and even less realized
than the female leads currently turning up on TNT. She endures
misogynistic comments from male cops and lacks a significant other,
save for her young son (Devin Brochu), whose only helpful
contribution is allowing Hank to tell the story that gives the
movie its title (the Valley of Elah is where David killed Goliath
[1 Samuel 17: 1-58]). And Emily is, of course, no match for the
investigatory powers of the taciturn Hank, who knows that
streetlights will make a car’s paint look a different color, plus
other fun facts that betray what the film ultimately becomes: a
highly-polished, well-acted, award-baiting episode of Law and Order.
Early on, Hank and Emily’s search ends with the worst possible
outcome: Mike was murdered, his body chopped into bits. It’s a
nightmare that only the cursed can fathom, but the anguish of a
military family is merely what drives the narrative. The film’s
takeaway message is its depiction of Post-Traumatic Stress
Disorder, which effects between 12 and 20 percent of Iraq War
veterans.
Indeed, as the investigation broadens into a marginally engaging
whodunit, the film’s thematic scope broadens in kind. During his
initial visit to Mike’s barracks, Hank steals his son’s cell phone
and discovers it contains damaged video clips recorded in Iraq.
Recovering the images initially smacks of time-wasting, but it’s
actually one of Haggis’s more interesting assertions. Every vet
needs to chronicle their experience and purge their grief. But
unlike vets from previous conflicts, the psychic toll of wars
fought by the current generation is clickable and available for
streaming. It’s YouTube and blog as emotional download, and an
easily Googled reminder that the teenagers charged with fighting
our wars always come back changed, if not dead.
Should the film strike a nerve, conservative death squads will
doubtless take up arms, because Haggis dares to suggest that war
isn’t always a glorious and enlightened undertaking (Note: the new
Rambo film is scheduled for release in May 2008). But Haggis,
despite the somber self-absorption that basically sinks the film
(the final shot is a doozy!), isn’t attempting a flower-in-the-
rifle-barrel call for peace at any cost. Nor is he disrespecting
the troops, aligning himself with terrorists, or advocating anti-
Americanism. Whether the right wing likes it or not, generals plan
the wars, but artists help weave their long-term effects into the
cultural fabric. And Haggis, from the padded comfort of his high
horse, fancies himself an important artist worthy of leading the
charge in 2007.
Still, the Big Statement he aches to make is easily put into
practice without even seeing his film: When you meet someone who
has returned from combat, don’t ask how many terrorists they
killed, or claim to understand them because of movies like In the
Valley of Elah. Just say, “Welcome home.”
----------------------
War hits home in 'Valley of Elah'
The innately powerful film, starring Tommy Lee Jones and Charlize
Theron, is an antiwar statement dressed up as a murder mystery.
By Peter RainerThe Christian Science Monitor, September 14, 2007
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0914/p11s02-almo.html
Grim and methodical, writer-director Paul Haggis's "In the Valley
of Elah" has a message-movie self-importance. It's one of the first
Iraq-themed movies out of the gate, and it aims to be, if not the
last word on the subject, then certainly one of the strongest.
Tommy Lee Jones plays Hank Deerfield – Vietnam vet, retired
sergeant, and Tennessee truck hauler – who gets a call from Fort
Rudd in New Mexico that his son Mike (Jonathan Tucker) has just
returned from Iraq and gone AWOL. Hank drives to the base, leaving
behind his distraught wife (Susan Sarandon, in a tiny part), and
discovers when he gets there that the commanders and Mike's platoon
buddies are either clueless or uncooperative.
When it is soon discovered that Mike was brutally murdered and
dismembered in a remote area bordering Army and local
jurisdictions, the official uncooperativeness continues, with only
a local civilian cop, Detective Emily Sanders (Charlize Theron),
willing to pursue the leads that Hank for the most part comes up
with on his own.
At first "In the Valley of Elah" resembles nothing so much as a
detective story with a political backdrop. Hank pieces the
information together while maintaining an almost inhuman stoicism.
He's the strong, silent type familiar from many a Western, but here
his near-silence isn't mythic, it's painful to behold. Everything
about Hank is painful. From the moment he hears the news of his
son, his face crumples into a baggy mask of woe. Jones is so good
at portraying hard-driven, nuggety men that his vulnerability here
is doubly wrenching.
But, as powerful as Jones can be, Haggis never allows Hank a
dimension beyond stoicism, as if we might not respect him if we saw
him cry. As the movie moves through its murder mystery mode and
begins racking up political points, Hank becomes a stand-in for all
those Americans bewildered and beleaguered by the war. He becomes a
Symbol.
Haggis, whose "Crash" was among the most overpraised Hollywood
movies of recent years, scores his points one at a time. In an
early scene, a TV set playing in the background has President Bush
declaring that "Freedom is on the march." This TV motif, which
recurs, drips with irony. Later on, one of Mike's platoon buddies
says that the only way to exit Iraq is to nuke it. America, we are
told, should not send heroes to places like Iraq.
Haggis maintains a superficial evenhandedness but in fact the
movie, which is loosely based on a real incident, is an indictment
of the Iraq war in all its ramifications. Haggis is saying that an
unjust war produces psychological horrors far beyond those seen in
just wars. He is saying that the all-American heroes fighting over
there are rendered soulless by the meaningless of the bloodshed.
But is it really true that wars such as Iraq and Vietnam, because
of their unpopularity, produced greater psychiatric distress among
their combatants than, say, World War I or World War II? The notion
that good wars are less harrowing for soldiers than bad ones is
sentimental – and politically loaded. But even if Haggis is correct
about this, it's a pretty tenuous basis for an indictment. There
will always be vets who are rendered psychotic by the hazards of
war – any war. The vets in this movie are made to shoulder the
blame for Iraq instead of the lawmakers who sent them into battle.
Haggis wields a big bazooka but his aim is low.
Nevertheless, "In the Valley of Elah" – the title refers to the
battleground where Goliath and David fought – held me despite my
many qualms. That's because the subject matter is innately powerful
and resists Haggis's pigeonholing. He's latched onto something
that's bigger than himself.
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