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War movies during wartime
Big stars, no stars. High-quality or dreadful. It doesn't matter. Virtually all the recent films about war have flopped. Why?
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Talking about movies
Movies during wartime
June 17, 2008
Despite its glittery cast, "Lions For Lambs" was a dud.
I remember a debate in a college writing class about how much distance a writer should put between a significant event in history or in one's personal life before recreating the story as a fictional narrative or as a memoir. No one could answer that question precisely but we all agreed that a certain distance usually benefited the writer and the writing. Recent movies about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq show that the question, for filmmakers too, is hard to answer.
The recent attempts of American feature filmmakers to come to grips with the country's military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan have for the most part been well-publicized failures—seemingly of more interest to critics and journalists than to filmgoers. Even as name directors and stars have lent their talents to Middle East-focused narratives, potential audiences have paid little attention: to Brian de Palma's "Redacted"; to the Afghanistan-themed "Lions for Lambs" with mega-stars Tom Cruise, Meryl Streep, and Robert Redford (who also directed); to Paul Haggis' "In the Valley of Elah" with Tommy Lee Jones, Susan Sarandon, and Charlize Theron; and to the most recent effort "Stop-Loss," a film by the celebrated director of "Boys Don't Cry," Kimberly Pierce.
The stories in these films are varied, but collectively they are about the personal suffering and moral consequences for young American soldiers who have experienced Middle East combat duty. The darkest in my opinion was de Palma's "Redacted". It was also the least seen. The film, based on a true incident, recounted the rape of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl by US troops and the murder of her parents and young sister.
"Lions for Lambs" mixed issues of media manipulation with the plight of idealistic young soldiers caught up in the hazards of combat duty in Afghanistan. "In the Valley of Elah" and "Stop-Loss" were essentially stateside stories, the former about a returned soldier whose mysterious disappearance and murder (by squadron buddies?) lead to a tangled civil-military investigation. "Stop-Loss" includes two poignant stories of young soldiers back home in small town Texas, one living fragilely with post-war traumatic stress and the other in rebellion against a military regulation that can return him to Iraq even though he believes he has met his service commitment.
The dismal financial failure of these films to raise audiences has baffled producers and distributors, so much so that the Lions Gate Company is holding back a serio-comic film, "The Lucky Ones," that in-house representatives consider superb, with great box office potential. According to director Neil Burger ("The Illusionist"), "The Lucky Ones" was inspired by Hal Ashby's "The Last Detail" (1973), one of the best of the many "buddy" road pictures that emerged in Vietnam-era cinema. Burger's film is also a road picture in which three returned Iraq vets – two men and a woman – head out together on a cross-country journey. It is tentatively scheduled for release in October.
But don't rush to blame the controversies around our present wars.
War movies have never thrived during wartime. The one significant World War I film made during that war was D.W. Griffith's "Hearts of the World," made in 1917 and released in March, 1918. During World War II, federal information agencies put reins on Hollywood and output was minimal. The few memorable films included "Flying Tigers" (1942), "Mrs. Miniver" (1942) and most notably, Frank Capra's seven-part documentary series "Why We Fight" (1942-1945).
As a soldier who served early in Vietnam (1962-3), I waited nearly 15 years for an American feature film that would approach realities of that war, including my own. It's not that Hollywood had ignored Vietnam. Rather filmmakers seemed wary of tackling the war in a direct and forthright manner. "The Green Berets" (1968) was made with US military assistance, but John Wayne, the film's star and director, maintained that the story should be seen as a cowboys-versus-Indians entertainment, not as a polemic exercise.
Two films about the treatment of native Americans in the late nineteenth century by the the US military were widely interpreted as screen analogies for My Lai and other atrocities against Vietnamese civilians: "Soldier Blue" (1970) and "Little Big Man" (1970). There was little else. Vietnam coverage on nightly television news programs was extensive and war-wearying. It's my guess that filmmakers and filmgoers at the time couldn't imagine that going to a movie about Vietnam would be very appealing. They were probably right. I believe that's part of the reason audiences have not turned out for the films about current conflicts.
History has shown that the most significant films about our wars have been made in the aftermath. The first great American film about World War II was "The Best Years of Our Lives" (1946), and great films about that war have kept coming—most recently, "Saving Private Ryan" (1998) and "Flags of our Fathers" (2006). The same is true for Vietnam: most recently last year's powerful POW escape film "Rescue Dawn" (2007), and the superb remake of "The Quiet American" (2002). For me, "The Quiet American," in its tone and prescient dialogue, felt and sounded very much like what I experienced in my own year in Saigon, not that far away in time from 1955 when Graham Greene wrote his novel.
Film historian and critic Frank Beaver is professor of film and video studies and professor of communication.