Chris Knipp Writing: Movies, Politics, Art


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PostPosted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 2:38 pm 
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A police procedural with blunt political overtones

Paul Haggis' In the Valley of Elah takes place in the plains in early winter. Tommy Lee Jones isn't at home there. His son, just back from Iraq, and in the army, has gone missing and Jones, his father, a retired officer of the Military Police, has gone to investigate on his own. He swipes his son's cell phone when someone from the unit (James Franco) lets him look at his son's gear. Partially restored videos from this desert-"fried" phone are a thematic image Haggis uses to show what Jones is really investigating, which is what his son did in Iraq and what that did to him and his fellow soldiers.

Elah is frankly about America in Iraq, but elliptically so. The stoical Jones is the perfect vessel for Haggis' understatement. So is the equally cool-headed, if more demonstrably angry, Charlize Theron (as a local police detective who gets involved in the case); and both give impeccable performances. Haggis, who has based this story on several actual recent incidents in the lives of Iraq veterans, is scoring points just as he was in Crash, but this time he's learned to be subtle. Not totally, mind you: the voice of George Bush and reports on Falluja are heard in the background of every public scene.

This is essentially a police procedural, of the not uncommon kind where civilians aren't satisfied with the cops and try to step in to do it themselves. Jones has no business investigating, and there is a jurisdictional dispute between the army and local police (of whom Theron is a maverick member), but all the action points toward finding out what happened to Jones' son Mike. Mike is gone, but the cell phone images show him, and in one flashback scene he's shown desperately calling his father form Iraq.

The occupation forces American troops to do terrible things, and some of them do terrible things when they come back here.

Susan Sarandon as Jones' wife has a few scenes, and roles are assigned to local police—Theron's generally uncooperative and disinterested coworkers. There is an army investigator, who tries to hush things up at every stage, and above all Mike's squad members are brought forward to speak and that's how the mystery is finally solved. There are several leads. After Mike's remains are found, the truth about what caused his death, as it finally emerges, is simple, pointless, and horrible. The title refers to the David and Goliath story which, Jones points out, is also in the Koran. He tells it to Theron's little boy, who wants him to read C.S. Lewis. Jones scans the book and says it doesn't make a word of sense to him. David and Goliath evidently does. Later Theron tells Jones her son won't stop talking about the story and now wants a slingshot. What this means and who the bully is in this story aren't quite clear, but there's an acknowledgment of the universal human impulse to fight and the justifiable need in some circumstances to do so. Mike and his buddies were in Bosnia before Iraq. Was that better? Haggis, who wrote and directed, has repressed and focused his passion this time, compared to Crash, whose receipt of the Oscar in the year of Brokeback Mountain seemed a travesty. He's still going for Oscars and messages; Jones might deserve a nomination. It is the repression that is interesting here and lends authenticity to the message. Haggis' story construction is neater and more believable this time. But it may be too soon to make a movie about Iraq. And Haggis could score his points better if he learned to lighten up.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.


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