Drop Frame

The Rifle in Your Hand: Confronting Audience and Adaptation in Response to “Jarhead,” Part I

14 November 2005

Sam Mendes’ film "Jarhead," based on ex-Marine sniper Anthony Swofford’s chilling first hand account of the first Gulf War, will be liked by many of those who oppose either the current war in Iraq or war as diplomatic method in general. The problem: those who support the war will like it too.

This may seem like the marketing phenomenon of the century – a film with a controversial topic that offends nobody – but the effect is disastrous to a film that in all other respects was well made.

For "Jarhead" is, on its face, a flawed movie. It fails to answer the single most basic question artists must answer when it comes to asking an audience to view their constructed works: why is this story being told? To elaborate further: why has this movie – or painting or composition or building or stack of legos (why not?) – been made? What opinion are you putting across? Why should I bother to spend $8 and a few hours on your vision?

Certainly, the topic of "Jarhead" is timely. Certainly, it is a courageous script for Mendes to have undertaken. But when the film’s credits roll, actor Jake Gyllenhaal and company’s feckless eyes staring past those few audience members who stay for the credits while their names and roles burn along the bottom of the frame, making their images evoke mug shots, the film has not made a statement of any sort concerning war. Is it pro-war? Is it against?

The structure of the film does not bother to let its audience know. And with such a film, it cannot simply say "no comment" without being, in the end, a farce.

Indeed, a statement of "no comment" in a film like "Jarhead" pangs of a desire on the part of the filmmaker not to offend. The actual presence of this desire cannot be proved, of course, but even the whisper of such an attempt is death for the artist and for his art. Movies confronting issues like the need or nature of war – or religion or race or sexual identity (a hot topic in upcoming films this year) or any number of controversial themes which should be discussed in the art world – cannot be made with appeasement in mind. Rather, talented artists like Mendes should go at the topic whole-heartedly, without questioning whom he will offend but rather hoping someone will be offended, so that discussion will be open, in the mainstream, or – to borrow a term from law class – in the marketplace. What greater honor is there for a piece of artwork than for it to be talked about? An attempt at that sort of audience engagement would embody the courage Mendes only started to show when he took on "Jarhead" as a project. That would be good filmmaking. "Jarhead" is not that. It is, instead, a ruse. It will be cautiously accepted by most of the people who see it, then more amiably forgotten.

After all, by not taking a stand in any way concerning war, Mendes has allowed supporters on either side of the issue of the current or general war to point to select moments of the film to back their positions, rather like zealots and non-believers debating the moral issues using the same Bible or Constitutional scholars arguing the word choices of the founding fathers. If one wants to take the film as anti-war, he can point to the moment when Gyllenhaal’s Anthony Swofford, maddened by endless waiting and vicious grunt work, points his loaded gun at a fellow American soldier or the beautifully composed image of Swofford vomiting at the sight of a charred body in a bombed out crater (it does not sound beautiful, but, image-wise, it is). Pro-war viewers can point to an equal number of moments – like Swofford saying "I was hooked" or Jamie Foxx’s Staff Sgt. Siek’s speech about loving the Marine Corps, faithfully recreated in the film’s trailer – to give weight to their point of view.

In one scene, the Marines whoop and holler to the "Ride of the Valkyries" attack sequence from "Apocalypse Now," the film a cinematized evokation of war in the same way that "Jarhead" cinematizes war (though, with its sequences showing a baptism-by-fire comraderie and endless search for a faceless enemy, "Jarhead" recalls "Full Metal Jacket" more than it does "Apocalypse Now"). This would be pro-war.

In another, while the Marines are celebrating their victory and the chance to go home, a soldier says that he – or, in a sense, all the Marines – will never come back to Iraq. Not so fast. Anti-war.

Where, then, does the film (or Mendes) stand?

To be honest, the moments that side with war advocates come easier to mind than those that support war objectors. But, given the tone of the film – the bland and endless landscapes, the oppressive heat, the time eating away at the soldiers – it is hard to believe that pro-war is the side the film really wishes to take.

In terms of filmmaking, "Jarhead" is seamless and gorgeous. No surprise, given that "Jarhead"s film crew – including director Sam Mendes, director of photography Roger Deakins, editor Walter Murch, composer Thomas Newman, and production designer Dennis Gassner – is nothing less than an all-star team, with 19 Academy Award nominations and five statuettes collected between them (plus two with Jamie Foxx and Chris Cooper in the cast, and casting director Debra Zane is legendary too, just no Oscar category for that job). Deakins’ visuals – including the afore mentioned composition of Swofford in the bomb crater – are as beautiful and striking as they are precise, while Murch’s editing keeps the pace hot, heavy, and articulate. The only question mark in this crew’s artistic choices is Newman’s score, which at times comes off either too contemporary or out of place with the desert setting, but for his part, he does a good job countering Swofford’s question in a the film as a aircraft flies over blaring The Doors’ "Break on Through": "That’s Vietnam music. Can’t we get our own music?"

The cast’s performances are also excellent, and the most notable among them is a shining Peter Sarsgaard in his supporting role as Swofford’s spotter Troy. His breakdown the moment Swofford is prevented from taking a sniper shot would have been enough to earn him an Oscar nomination if "Jarhead" were a good enough movie to deserve it. In any case, watch out for this kid: the Washington University St. Louis grad is in several movies right now – "Jarhead," "The Dying Gaul" (Craig Lucas, 2005), "Flightplan" (Robert Schwentke, 2005), and "The Skeleton Key" (Iain Softley, 2005) – having just come off fine work in "Garden State" (2004) and "Kinsey" (2004), and he is only getting better.

But despite the better efforts of an enviable crew, "Jarhead" fails to impress. Rather than debate or support a war, it shows ineffectual cut shots of a moment in the not-too-distant past – the newsreel more than the broadcast’s voice over. The effort has been seen before, and recently: "Kingdom of Heaven" (Ridley Scott, 2005), fearing offense to segments of its audience, came off emotionally inept and artistically ambiguous. The same could be said of "Jarhead." Mendes’ film is bland, not uninformed but uninforming, and certainly a missed opportunity to create a discussion about the wars in the Middle East that is not already happening in the news.

-~-

Photo Caption: Welcome to the Suck. In one of many provocative compositions by cinematographer Roger Deakins, Jarhead Anthony Swofford (Jake Gyllenhaal) stares down the first blasts of Operation Desert Storm in Sam Mendes' film "Jarhead." From the Universal Studios Trailer.

There are . Leave your own response by clicking here.