Jarhead

I bit off more than I can chew this weekend. I’m so tired and achy tonight that I’m glad I’m finally home and can put on my pajamas. I’m actually all shook up, and not in a good way. First off, I went and had brunch with some friends, which was nice, and not too stressful. Then, I worked for a while on my book for Sterling. Then, Wing and Glark picked me up and we went to see Jarhead.

Welcome to the suck, indeed. Despite a solid cast with excellent performances by just about every young man there, despite some innovative and interesting direction, despite a story that’s actually kind of timely, despite all this the movie’s still terribly mediocre. Nothing happens. Now, I know that’s sort of the point, all the build up, hundreds of thousands of troops in the Gulf, and then a war that only lasts for 4 days, but still, something should have happened.

Instead, we get a sort of stream of consciousness film that plays more like it should be on stage than anything else. And it got me thinking, about how it’s Remembrance Day next week, about how war has changed so much in my lifetime that even the glorification of it has been deconstructed to the point where it’s hard to see the ins and outs of obvious right and wrong. Sam Mendes had a chance to make a statement with the film. He didn’t take that chance. He played it real safe, sort of flew under the radar so much that the movie isn’t about war; it’s not about the oil; hell, it’s not even about the soldiers&#151it’s a coming of age story wrapped in the context of war that works as an allegory for Swofford’s (Gyllenhaal’s) broken soul. And you know, what’s even worse is that the film isn’t bad, it’s just seriously mediocre.

I guess that’s why I’m disappointed. There are boys, Canadian boys, American boys, over there now dying senseless deaths, and Mendes filled up his film with a hell of a lot of quasi gay porn and bombastic male posturing. Perhaps that’s what it was really like, but then that makes what’s happening today even more futile. And with the current war in Iraq turning out to be more like Vietnam than even Bush himself gathered it could, I’m disappointed that in this day and age of media cynicism, the likes of Michael Moore, and the big Hollywood machine, that Mendes didn’t stand up and shout at the top of his lungs with this film. Who knows? Maybe he did and I just missed the point. Oorah, indeed.

Now I’m overtired and feeling really quite ill. I wanted to get more done on my book, but it’ll have to wait until tomorrow. There’s always tomorrow.