By John Kass
Thursday, January 16, 2014
I wasn't eager about seeing "Lone Survivor,"
the new film about four U.S. Navy SEALs forced to fight a terrible and heroic
battle against the Taliban in Afghanistan.
What worried me was that it would turn out to be a
typical Hollywood war movie, with archetypal characters (the city kid, the
cynic, the country boy, etc.) and some kind of big speech at the climax.
But it wasn't a typical Hollywood war movie. It is about
morality and the cost and a mission gone wrong. And I'm glad I saw it.
One of the good things about "Lone Survivor" is
that there isn't a big rousing speech from the star. Instead, there was a short
line. But it seized me and I just can't shake it. It is delivered on the bloody
mountain, a request from one wounded SEAL to another, asking, simply, that a
message be sent to his wife:
"If I die I want you to make sure that Cindy knows
how much I love her, and that I died with my brothers with a full ...
heart."
When the movie had finished, as the credits rolled, many
of us in the theater sat still and stayed that way, thinking of what we'd just
seen. On screen, there were photos of the actual SEALs and helicopter pilots
and other soldiers who died in that fight.
You see them with their wives, with their kids, you read
their names.
The film is leading at the box office, but that's not a
reason to see it. If nothing else, "Lone Survivor" serves America by
confronting us -- and the political class -- with what America is desperately
trying to avoid and forget.
The 9/11 terrorist attacks were long ago. And the
advantage once held by the political class, talking about duty as if they
understood it, is long gone. They don't make speeches about war. President
Barack Obama remains stubbornly ambiguous at best about the other 9/11, about
those other former SEALs who were left to die on the rooftops of Benghazi on
Sept. 11, 2012.
Here's the thing: America sends our people into bad
places, into Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and elsewhere. So we owe them. The very
least we owe them is consideration.
Like many of you, I'd heard the buzz about "Lone
Survivor," with some early reviews talking about the realism, although how
the hell would they know? Realism in a war movie? My father had an answer when
we'd ask him to watch a war movie on TV.
"Put on Bob Hope," he'd say, mentioning a
comedian of another age.
My father spent almost a decade fighting, first in World
War II, in the Albanian mountains in the snow against the Italians and the
Germans. He survived the Nazi occupation when the Germans forced starvation of
Athens. Then came more fighting in the terrible civil war against the communist
guerrillas in Greece.
So after that, he wasn't remotely interested in war
movies. If you told him a war movie was supposed to be "realistic,"
he'd just look at you, or look through you. Once he said that if a war movie
was truly realistic, then you could smell it. And it doesn't smell like
popcorn.
"So put on Bob Hope, will you?" and he'd stare
at the TV, and he'd light a smoke and sigh and go someplace inside himself.
Just before the premiere of "Lone Survivor" I
told friends and radio listeners that I wanted to see it. But the truth is, I'd
hoped avoid it. Marcus Luttrell changed my mind.
Luttrell is the lone survivor, the SEAL who wrote the
book on which the movie is based. In a recent interview on CNN, Jake Tapper
said something unfortunate about Afghanistan.
Tapper: "It seemed senseless. I don't mean to
disrespect in any way, but it seemed senseless -- all of these wonderful people
who were killed for an op that went wrong."
Luttrell: "We spend our whole lives training to
defend this country and then we were sent over there by this country -- so
you're telling me because we were over there doing what we were told by our
country that it was senseless? And my guys -- what? They died for
nothing?"
Tapper: "No."
Luttrell: "That's what you said. So, let me just
say, it went bad for us over there, but that was our job. That's what we did.
We didn't complain about it."
A few scribes, trolling for readers, criticize the movie
as political propaganda. I just don't think they get it. The movie works
because it isn't political. It works because it is about brothers.
Whether it wins any film prizes is irrelevant. Such
honors are about cliques and politics. At the awards ceremony, the stars stand
on the red carpet and talk about what they're wearing, how they're feeling.
They hold up that shiny golden statue. They chatter. They're validated.
Celebrity writers prattle on about the after-parties.
But this movie is something apart from all that chatter.
This one has quality.
I suppose you can wait to see it at home when it comes
out on cable. You can tell yourself that your big screen and sound system can
faithfully reproduce the theater experience. But it can't reproduce this:
At the end, with the photos of the fallen up there, you
turn. Just then some other theater patron looks up and catches your eye. You
notice each other, strangers in the movie-house darkness, and there is a mutual
recognition of a debt.
We owe them.
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