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"Have you noticed that war is the only chance that a man gets to do something redeeming?," playwright/screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky wrote some 45 years ago. "That's why war is so attractive. Brave men die in battle, but in peacetime they're just normal cowards. Frightened of their wives, trembling before their bosses, terrified at the passing of the years. But war makes them gallant. It makes them self-sacrificing and generous instead of greedy and selfish. War isn't hell at all. It's man at his best. The highest morality that he's capable of "
These words were spoken as part of a long and windy tea-time speech that James Garner gave in Chayefsky's The Americanization of Emily ('64) , and wow, did they all came rushing back to me yesterday afternoon as I watched Ross Katz's Taking Chance! This is a movie that left a very conflicted taste of my mouth.
It's a sad, subdued, meditative drama about a middle-aged Marine officer (Kevin Bacon) escorting the body of a young Marine killed in Iraq to his family's home in Wyoming for burial. It uses emotional and aesthetic restraint to make its points. Katz is no charlatan-- he has good chops. But in terms of giving voice to red-state sentiments about the valor of war -- and by extension the nobility of the Iraq War effort -- Taking Chance shows almost no restraint at all.
I admired it for the respect and sadness it shows for our fallen dead -- don't get me wrong. But at the same time it's a faintly dishonorable film. Yes, that's what I said -- dishonorable.
Taking Chance moves you with understated eloquence about the profound and lasting sadness of a young man dying in a war (any war) with so many decades of potentially rich life taken from the soldier and his loved ones and his unborn children. But the movie does something else. It sells the honor and glory of combat death in a "sensitive" way that is not only cloying but borders on the hucksterish. Which I feel is a kind of obscenity.
One result of this sell job is that it lends an aura of dignity and nobility to a conflict that was launched upon lies and neocon arrogance and idiocy, and that war simply doesn't deserve the respectful salute that Taking Chance obliquely extends.
I'm not objecting to this film offering a modest and moving tribute to our fallen dead. I was in fact moved by this. But Ross Katz knows full well that Bush, Cheney, Rummy and Wolfowitz will cream in their pants when they see this thing. Is he proud of this? Because I think Taking Chance is catering, in a roundabout way, to not just the red-state sentiments that have prolonged the Iraq War (and which certainly prolonged the Vietnam War) but the kneejerk neocon thinking that has also kept us in that terrible situation.
The fundamental objection I have to Katz and the film is the underlying spin behind the general honoring of brave young men suffering ghastly death and mutilation under the wind-whipped stars and stripes. Garner's Emily speech talks about the obscenity of selling the valor of war death -- the tributes, statues and Memorial Day parades that praise and worship the act of being killed in combat -- because it perpetrates the carnage through decades and generations and centuries.
"We shall never end wars," Garner says, "as long as we make heroes of our dead and shrines of our battlefields. The fact is that we perpetuate war by exalting its sacrifice. It may be ministers and generals and politicians who blunder us into war, but the least the rest of us can do is to resist honoring the institution."
Posted by Jeffrey Wells on January 17, 2009 at 11:00 AM
comment #1
Phatang!
says ...
"I was movied by it, in fact."
Amazing! Applicable to so many recent films. "Revolutionary Road," "Milk," etc... I'll be using that expression from now on...
Posted by Phatang!
at January 17, 2009 12:14 PM
comment #2
Phatang!
says ...
Bah, you corrected it! Wimp.
Posted by Phatang!
at January 17, 2009 12:15 PM
comment #3
MindlessObamaton
says ...
As someone whose younger cousin died In Iraq last year, I can promise you that just because a war is predicated on misconceptions, even lies (if you please), it doesn't lessen the sacrifice that so many of our best have made in this conflict and it's condescending to think oherwise. I have NO PROBLEM with saying you disagree wit hhe war. I'm not happy about it over there, but as someone who had to watch my Uncle (a doctor who did 3 tours in Vietnam and is the strongest, most honrable man I have or will ever know) breakdown and weep over his son's casket, I do take offense when the sacrifice is belittled. Not the boogie men in power, just the brave out there trying to stay alive.
Posted by MindlessObamaton
at January 17, 2009 12:33 PM
comment #4
MindlessObamaton
says ...
Forgive the typos. Been on a 16 hour rotation here and can barely move, frankly.
Posted by MindlessObamaton
at January 17, 2009 12:34 PM
comment #5
George Prager
says ...
I wonder if Ross Katz ever saw Henry Jaglom's TRACKS starring Dennis Hopper
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_fMmm
Seems like a similar film in theme, if not execution.
Posted by George Prager
at January 17, 2009 12:44 PM
comment #6
Abbey Normal
says ...
What has more honor: Getting killed fighting gallantly on a battlefield that probably shouldn't even exist? Or dying of old age after a long life spent raising your children, loving and supporting other people?
Death itself has no meaning. War is just an invention that creates more opportunity to kill and get killed. Is it more "honorable" to die in an invented death than it is to die an actual one?
Posted by Abbey Normal
at January 17, 2009 1:03 PM
comment #7
Abbey Normal
says ...
And I should clairfy: I don't mean to belittle the pain anyone feels over losing loved ones in a war. That pain is real and valid and terrible in every way. And I recognize that it's comforting to believe that they died nobly, fighting for a just cause. Comfort in any form is valuable when something this awful happens.
But while we honor the dead, it doesn't lessen their honor to express rage...because essentially what happened in Iraq is that Bush and his cronies invented a way for your loved one to die. Whether that death had honor or not is beside the point.
Posted by Abbey Normal
at January 17, 2009 1:14 PM
comment #8
nemo
says ...
It is possible for a sacrifice to be noble and for the cause to be a pointless waste. It is possible for both these things to be true. It is not a mark of respect for the dead and wounded to pretend otherwise.
Posted by nemo
at January 17, 2009 1:29 PM
comment #9
arturobandini2
says ...
Very eloquently spoken, Abbey. The full impact of your last paragraph may take a decade or more to really sink in. But someday, our collective grief will in fact turn to rage. We can only remain in denial for so long.
Posted by arturobandini2
at January 17, 2009 1:30 PM
comment #10
George Prager
says ...
"A cause that won't let you eat an avocado?"
Posted by George Prager
at January 17, 2009 2:09 PM
comment #11
lazarus
says ...
Didn't James Jones say it first, to an extent? Two years before Emily came out, his dedication in The Thin Red Line:
"This book is cheerfully dedicated to those greatest and most heroic of human endeavors, WAR and WARFARE; may they never cease to give us the pleasure, excitement, and adrenal stimulation that we need, or provide us with the heroes, the presidents and leaders, the monuments and museums which we erect to them in the name of PEACE."
Brutal and bitter, but so true.
Posted by lazarus
at January 17, 2009 2:31 PM
comment #12
Hallick
says ...
Jones' quote sounds more perverted and soulless than brutal and bitter. Brutal and bitter is burying a loved one who never saw their 21st birthday, or got a chance to hold their first child in their arms. That peace bit at the end is just a fig leaf covering the boner WAR and WARFARE must've been giving Mr. Jones.
Posted by Hallick
at January 17, 2009 5:19 PM
comment #13
lazarus
says ...
Apparently you're not picking up on the sarcasm of his remarks, Hallick.
Posted by lazarus
at January 17, 2009 7:30 PM
comment #14
Hallick
says ...
"Apparently you're not picking up on the sarcasm of his remarks, Hallick."
Apparently not. I left it laying there like a face down penny. A hundred apologies, Lazarus.
Posted by Hallick
at January 17, 2009 9:59 PM
comment #15
Laremy42
says ...
I attended the same screening as you Jeff, and I disagree with your assessment. I actually heard another gent say "It was just too simple, and it shouldn't be" so I think I understand where the need to say "Well, we shouldn't be involved" comes from, and frankly I think we shouldn't be involved, but that's not what this movie is about.
It's about the impact a death has on a community, and the reverence, sometimes irrational reverence, people place on symbols and ceremony. The fact is the salute, the flag, and all of the pomp the Marines do hits in a place deeper than logic. Which is why I think this film is apolitical actually, it neatly skips the entire equation and instead deals with the consequences.
Which is exactly why Bush, Cheney, and the rest would never accept a film like this. It shows off rather beautifully the American emphasis on individual life. Is there another place that honors their war dead in such an extreme manner? The film showed how much respect people have for the symbols, while not asking what everyone thinks of the leadership.
To me this was a smart move, and one I can champion. Because if every life is valuable than I think people start making better decisions at some point.
Posted by Laremy42
at January 18, 2009 12:42 AM
comment #16
scooterzz
says ...
i'm going to reiterate what i said a few weeks ago...no one is going to see this movie..they won't pay to see it in theaters and they won't watch it when it premieres on hbo 2/21...
yes, there will be daffy a-holes who preface every post with 'it opens friday...i can't wait!' but this movie is bound for the bone-yard for exactly the reasons wells points out.....
that said, the guilt groups will swoop in and say it's the best thing bacon/hbo has ever done and suggest a bazillion awards.....jus' sayin'.....
Posted by scooterzz
at January 18, 2009 6:28 AM
comment #17
JohnnyM
says ...
Maybe people honor the fallen in war because they know that without these brave men they would have no freedom.
These brave men died so that you can die of old age and write missives about the horrors of war and the soullessness of those who fight them.
It never ceases to amaze the disrespect these people give to the ones who guaranteed their freedom.
Posted by JohnnyM
at January 19, 2009 7:54 AM
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