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| In the Valley of Elah |
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| Written by Jack Hudson | |
| Friday, 14 September 2007 | |
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In the Valley of Elah is a new film from Paul Haggis (director and writer of Crash, writer of Million Dollar Baby, among others). I should say at outset I am ambivalent about Haggis’s work. In previous films, he tends to write “on the nose,” choppy, emotionally overwrought scenes that shove their message directly at the audience. Crash had some great performances and moments, but breathlessly raced from one emotional payoff to the next in a way that flattened everything. And the plot of Crash was wildly improbable. Elah, which stars Tommy Lee Jones, Charlize Theron, and Susan Sarandon, solves the improbability problem by being based on a true story. To me, this was not fully appreciated till the end of the film, when the full impact of the story hits. This is a rare case where I would prefer to be manipulated by Hollywood, rather than discover that what I’d just seen was true. It is a true story about the Iraq war, so the emotional content is inherent. Halfway through the film, I was still mostly listing various imperfections. Tommy Lee Jones, normally rock-solid, seemed to be searching for his character. Susan Sarandon looked like her part was cut down to glimpses. And though she can act, Charlize Theron looks too much like a perfect human from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis to be convincing in any small town story anywhere. But the film moves forward inexorably, if clunkily. It’s about Iraq, and returning veterans, and it’s based on a true story. It is about news that is happening now, as I write. As you read, in other words. So by the end, I’d forgotten any of these inconsequential criticisms. I think this film may be one of the more explosive on the subject of the war. Especially when it gets to the multiplexes in the middle of the country. Oddly, they jumped the release up from December to this week. Paul Haggis spoke after the preview I attended. He was self-deprecating, thoughtful, and emotionally caught by his subject. In screening the film for Iraq vets and families, he has already heard several more stories that would match the one he told. At the end of the talk, he mentioned meeting a young soldier that was an extra in the film, who came up to him one day on the set to say goodbye. The soldier explained that he wouldn’t be around the next week because he was shipping out for Iraq on the weekend. As Haggis told this story the screening audience fell silent. The crowd filed back out of the theater onto 57th Street, and remarkably, there was no evidence of a war anywhere in sight.  Photo:wallyg, Creative Commons, Flickr Culture 
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written by Arnaud , September 20, 2007
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written by Arnaud , October 02, 2007
Follow up:
Here are the total box off receipts for thoughtful anti-war/ anti-American films (Elah may hit $5 million but you get my point): * Road To Guantanamo = $326,876 * In The Valley Of Elah = $3,460,000 * Shut Up And Sing = $1,215,045 * No End In Sight = $1,360,782 * A Mighty Heart = $9,176,787 * Why We Fight = $1,439,972 * Power And Terror: Noam Chomsky In Our Time = $292,470 * Uncovered: The War On Iraq = $238,942 * Iraq In Fragments = $202,928 TOTAL: 17,812,802 And yet in a single weekend The Kingdom, a film that depicts Americans as the good guys kicking Islamic terrorist butt made nearly as much as all of those films put together = 17,694,00.
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written by Arnaud , October 26, 2007
Follow Up #2
"It doesn't matter how many Oscar winners are in front of or behind the camera--audiences are proving to be conscientious objectors when it comes to this fall's surge of antiwar and anti-Bush films. Both "In the Valley of Elah" and, more recently, "Rendition" drew minuscule crowds upon their release, which doesn't bode well for the ongoing stream of films critical of the Iraq war and the Bush administration's wider war on terror. "Rendition," which features three Oscar winners in key roles, grossed $4.1 million over the weekend in 2,250 screens for a ninth-place finish. A re-release of "The Nightmare Before Christmas" beat it, and it's 14 years old. . . . Beyond the fiction features, the anti-Iraq war documentary "No End in Sight" (box office: $1.4 million) couldn't capture the indie crowd, beating a swift retreat to DVD next Tuesday despite glowing reviews. " Tag it:           | |
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What else could that be with the eminent participation of super IQed Susan Sarandon.
Despite the little efforts made towards bumper-sticker bipartisanship: "We Support Our Troops", these fall flat as poor attempts to give balance and credibility to a definitely biased movie:
* Every service person in the movie who goes to Iraq comes back an amoral psycho case or drug addict.
* President Bush is always pontificating from a nearby radio or television,
* Everyone gets their check, directly or indirectly, from the Pentagon,
* Soldiers in Iraq all go mad and start shooting evry and anyone!
Other feelgood subplots abound: Theron's Emily, a single mother - of course -, is sexually harassed by the male cops - bad white men - on her squad; Sarandon's Joan, phoning Hank's motel for updates on the case, is emotionally shut out by her husband - bad white men -, racism is bad - but of course every where - and so on.
As to why they moved it three months ahead ... just look around, Tinseltwon hopes that this pitiful movie will achieve what Dems in Congress, the Pink B*. and Moveon.soros are failing to do: bring the war to an end and turn Americans in surrendering peanut butter eater monkeys.
Fat chance!