Hm. Way better than his Crash yet shackled to some of that film’s flaws, In the Valley of Elah succeeds in large part because of the taciturn, restrained gravity well that is Tommy Lee Jones (complemented by a slew of strong supporting actors).
Haggis’ film is an indictment of Iraq, sort of. I say “sort of” because it recalls any number of Army mysteries set in other times aimed at exposing the viciousness engendered (very much en-gendered) by war: Courage Under Fire, Casualties of War, A Soldier’s Story. The critique seems . . . well, generic, and the portrait of Iraq diffuses into soft-headed and too-easily-dismissed our-boys-done-become-bastards b.s. We could certainly stand a strong anti-Iraq film, but this becomes more simply and less compellingly a vague anti-war film. Even that would be okay, but Elah suffers as well from some of the kind of bigfooted big-moment Symbols and thematic stomping that mars Haggis’ writing pretty fucking consistently. An upside down flag early in the film takes us right out of the narrative, seems so egregiously stupid and obvious that I almost turned the film off, and then when it returns later on to underline, italicize, bold-font, all-caps tell you the point, I was just disappointed.
Because in between these moments, and despite the fuzziness of Haggis’ political vision, there’s a very strong film about masculinity worth seeing. As a portrait of men brutal to themselves and to women, incapable of connection, caught up in a mythology dependent on viciousness falsely imagined as virtue (nicely etched in the story of David and Goliath, to which the title refers). Again, Jones sells the thing–his portrait of an old Army hand is unsentimental, unflinching, and even in scenes pushed to the edge of treacle he keeps a tight rein. And there are scenes where the words are pared away and the symbols/thematics/plotting don’t dull the senses and you see what this film might have been. There’s a moment between Susan Sarandon (playing the long-suffering wife) and Jones, shot from a great distance down a hospital hallway, that Haggis holds on, lets linger, and I get a sense of what this guy is capable of, if he can just get out of his own way and trust his actors and his audience more.
Worth seeing, with qualifications noted.
Jeff, you saw this long ago, and liked it more than me, I think. (And never posted. Jerk!) Got any thoughts?
I thought I posted something about Elah but maybe it was just a random e-mail to you (an illicit offline communique). Yes, the films you reference (particularly Courage Under Fire though not so much the overblown and histrionic Casualties of War or the hermetic A Soldier’s Story) are on target; this is a genre film (war meets police procedural). And I am in absolute agreement with you when it comes to the silliness surrounding the flag (both of those scenes should have been left on the cutting room floor); I literally groaned out loud in the theatre. Still, Jones is outstanding, and, as you mention in your third paragraph, the way the film gets under your skin as it burrows deep into the dysfunction and chaos; the passive aggression and outright violent impulses these soldiers are facing externally and internally was particularly distressing for me. I remember leaving the theatre working through powerful yet inchoate feelings of regret and sadness and confusion. Finally, I liked the way the film utilized fragile and fragmented sources of digital media as a mode of investigating the story behind the story. It’s not a perfectly realized conceit but it out Cloverdale‘s Cloverdale.
we watched this a couple of nights ago and i liked it fine (certainly more than the slicker michael clayton). yes, it is more restrained haggis but as you’ve both noted some of the worst instincts he demonstrated in crash return here, albeit in more muted form: apart from the flag, the other major offender in this category for me was the red herring with the hispanic soldier–both an example of pointless narrative jerking around, and a heavy-handed “expose” of assumed racism. the relationship between jones and theron was also too thin.
still, i liked it–mostly because of tommy lee jones’ performance (sarandon is great in her smaller role as well, and frances fisher’s breasts also do good work–certainly better than josh brolin’s facial hair). it is such a tightly controlled performance, though i suppose it suffers from not looking too different from tommy lee jones playing tommy lee jones. we watch there will be blood today. the oscar probably already has day lewis’ name on it, but he’ll have to be very good to be better than this muted perfomance.