1.  The USMC Goes to the Movies - Not

 

Carolyn and I are planning to see the movie "Jarhead."  Oorah.  So I was immediately interested when I found posted, on DFW Marine Corps Families Site, a chain of USMC officialdom developing an Official Stance on the film.  The Corps had been offered some free seats at an early screening.  What to do?  The word came down:

 

FYI

Below are Talking Points provided by HQMC DivPA for the movie "Jarhead."  The talking points were developed in consultation with L.A. PAO and, subject to your approval, should receive the widest dissemination. 

"Jarhead," based on the book of the same title, is a self-deprecating look by one former Marine of his service during Operations Desert Shield/Desert Storm.  The movie did not receive Marine Corps support. It is scheduled to air on November 4, 2005.

As with previous films, the movie producers may be at Cinema complexes with cameras to solicit feedback from Marines.  Marines should be discouraged from viewing the movie in uniform and from making any comment that would result in the appearance of endorsement.

Talking points as follows:

    *   The movie's script is an inaccurate portrayal of Marines in general and does not provide a reasonable interpretation of military life and thus it did not meet the criteria for DoD assistance.

    *   The film is a form of entertainment and directors tend take a creative license to make the film entertaining to their audience and generally are not concerned with accurate or reasonable portrayals of military life, operations and policies.

    *   Marines should be prudent on how they comment on the movie's merit and refrain from endorsing or not endorsing a particular form of entertainment.

Below are two reviews of the movie.

"Jarhead" by Anthony Swofford

In this self-lacerating memoir, an ex-Marine sniper who fought in the Gulf yearns to escape from the myths of warfare and the sadism of military life.

By Laura Miller

March 10, 2003 - The dirty secret about combat memoirs isn't that war is senseless or that heroes are often terrified or that the battlefield can turn even good men into dehumanized monsters or that everyone is bored except for the moments when they're scared shitless or even that there is a beast inside every last one of us. The secret is that these stories are all more or less the same, once you decide which of two categories they belong to: tales of valor and tales of squalor.

The tales of valor have enjoyed resurgence of late, particularly those about World War II, but despite "Band of Brothers" and other enterprises of the late Stephen Ambrose, the second, bleaker type of war story is still ascendant. Its touchstones are Joseph Heller's "Catch-22" (a novel, but still) and Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried," books that strive to explain that, stupid as it is to fight wars, it is even stupider to glorify the fighting of them. And, more recently, war memoirs verge on disparaging themselves, so dark and roiling is the contempt to be found in them. Anthony Swofford's "Jarhead" is one of those books; you imagine him half-wishing, as he gets to the end of the book, that he could reach back and start erasing it from the beginning.
...

Whoa, Hoss: 

This is, in fact, a *book* review by the current Mayor of Dallas, a former journalist picking up a few bucks with her pen.  I like her last sentence, because I'd come to the conclusion about 2/3 the way through Swofford's memoir that the author was such an unhappy fellow that I no longer cared for his company.  After about 150 pages worth of a depressive finding in life no saving grace, no glimmer of hope, not even release from pain at the bottom of a bottle - I, too, wished I "could reach back and start erasing it from the beginning."  I was yelling at the author, "Find God! Change drugs! Enroll in night classes!  Get over it!"

The official confusion of Sam Mendes' film with Swofford's bestseller is a real jaw-dropper.  I am reminded of Mike Lorfing’s updated version of the WW II Military saying, "There's always 4% who never get the word."  During the Vietnam Era it became, "Only 10% ever get the word.  And they don't understand it."

Meanwhile back at the Corps, there follows another review of the book, not the movie, and the chain of command clanks on:

...

Recommend Marines do not attend special screening of "Jarhead" in uniform. This looks to be a set-up to get the USMC to comment/endorse this film.   See below email to MCRC PAO.  Generally these special screenings are for the media to write their reviews.  If they see Marines in uniform, they will no doubt approach them to comment on the film.

I have no concerns with Marines attending in civilian attire."

...

If they've seen the movie, all they need to tell them is that "I prefer to refrain from assuming the role of a movie critic." - leave it as that.  Or perhaps they could say that "I'm not a movie critic and perhaps you should ask someone who is."  Make sure they say it with a smile.
...

Okaaaaay:

This is not exactly "Roger Ebert goes to the Movies." 

This is "The Marine Corps doesn't go to the Movies."  Somebody upstairs claims to have read the script, but none of these official voices belongs to someone who has actually seen the film. And what is the outcome of this mountainous labor?  When the word hits bottom, what bounces back up?

"In the end, we chose to graciously decline the invitation completely.  No one will be attending."

...

 

No doubt they made sure to say that with a smile. 

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2. Not a John Wayne Movie

 

"Every war is different," says Anthony Swofford as the movie "Jarhead" comes to a close. "Every war is the same."  Looking back on his experience, he sees that the first Gulf War and the Marine Corps have become ineradicable parts of who he is: "Every jarhead is me."  The screen shimmers and shifts into a scene of a desert patrol dwarfed by distance and hazed by heat waves.  "We are still in the desert," he says.  The screen darkens.  The credits begin to roll. 

 

A critic once observed that audiences emerge from a comedy talking animatedly with one another, but after a tragedy they come forth subdued and solitary, each absorbed by his or her own thoughts. 

 

"Jarhead" is not a tragedy but a tragic coming-of-age story.  As in "The Last Picture Show," a young man discovers what a cruel, destructive business life can be. Swofford emerges from a war that has consisted of a long, maddening wait followed by a hard march through the surreal aftermath of battles already won by jets dropping smart bombs, toward a horizon blackened by Saddam's burning oil wells.  He returns home to find that his girlfriend has left him for another man.  His best friend, who suffered with him through the combat that never came, dies as a civilian, possibly a suicide, as he was thrown out of the Corps with a dishonorable discharge. 

 

Subdued and solitary, I waited outside the theater for my wife. 

 

"So, what did you think?" I asked her when she came out. "Definitely not a John Wayne movie," she said.  "No," I responded, reminded of John Wayne – No, wait, it was Clint Eastwood - sharing a victory cigar with a young Marine beneath an American flag raised atop a hill in Grenada in “Heartbreak Ridge." 

 

"It wasn't as dark as the book," I said.  She replied, "In the book you couldn't see Swofford's smile." 

 

Jake Gyllenhaal does display an engaging, youthful grin in the early part of the movie.  He plays the twenty-year-old Swoff very well.  And Jamie Foxx does Sgt. Sykes brilliantly.  Against the backdrop of a night made at once hellish and spectacular by blazing oil wells, the Sergeant tells Swoff that he (Sykes) could have joined his brother and had a nice safe job stateside, but with no chance to see such sights as this. "I love this job," he says. "I thank God for every day he gives me in the Corps. Oorah...  You know what I mean, Swoff?"  Foxx's delivery is flat, point blank, neither sarcastic nor enthusiastic.  He is an exhausted soldier giving himself a pep talk he scarcely believes in any longer.  Get out your Oscar Nomination forms.
  

At dinner we tried to recall what was book and what was movie.  I did not remember the scene in which the soldiers are interviewed by a TV journalist from the book, but from Kubrick's "Full Metal Jacket."  From "Full Metal Jacket" also, I believe, came the bizarre business of a soldier's sardonically companionating a corpse.  The war-is-surreal-hell moral of the movie reminded me of Coppola's "Apocalypse Now" - a film the young jarheads watch with sexual intensity in Mendez's movie, as if it is battle porn.  But the scene in which the soldiers sit down to enjoy a home movie one guy's wife has made - of herself being humped by their next door neighbor - that, we all agreed, was in the book. 

 

I remember when "Battle Cry" came out in 1955.  Unlike the Boy-Scout-clean soldiers of most war movies of that era, these Marines said Hell and Damn.  And one of them actually shot the finger at some troops riding past - What a shocker!      

…

 

3.  They said Oorah too much

 

A Jacksonville, NC Daily News reporter interviewed several Marines from the local base who saw the movie.  Excerpt:

 

Their reviews seemed to be positive, especially concerning the portrayal of the relationship between Marines and how deployments and war are mostly about sitting around and waiting.

"I thought it was good," said Lance Cpl. Richard Usher, 19, from Tampa, Fla. "From what I know, it's accurate. They did say 'Oohra' way too much."

Lance Cpl. Josh Rader, 29, of Georgia, said he thought the movie was one of the more accurate portrayals of the Marine Corps, with the only more accurate movie being Stanley Kubrick's "Full Metal Jacket."

"A lot of the training, they dramatize it more," Rader said. "I'd say it's probably more accurate."

Lance Cpl. Adam Blades, 20, with 1st Battalion, 2nd Marines, agreed, but took exception to the actors' ages.

"The actors were a little old," he said. "The majority of guys going over there are like 18 and 19. But it was pretty cool. As accurate as I've seen."

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4. They got much of the big stuff right

 

"How Accurate Is Jarhead?" by Nathaniel Fick

 

(Fick left the Marines as a captain after leading platoons in Afghanistan and Iraq. He is the author of Error! Hyperlink reference not valid..)

 

"Welcome to the Suck." That was the tagline of Anthony Swofford's best-selling Gulf War memoir, Jarhead, but it also neatly summed up my opinion of the book... I never see movies made from books I like. But, I thought, why not try Hollywood's spin on Jarhead, a book I (and nearly every Marine I know) despised? It could only be better.

And it was. To be sure, those who know the Corps will doubt many of the movie's details... Already, an official memo from Marine Corps Public Affairs warns that "the movie's script is an inaccurate portrayal of Marines in general and does not provide a reasonable interpretation of military life." This is a bit much. The American Bar Association, the CIA, and police departments across the country don't protest when Hollywood takes license with their professions, and neither should the Marines.

Besides, director Sam Mendes and screenwriter William Broyles Jr. get much of the big stuff right. "Swoff" (Jake Gyllenhaal) isn't the tormented incompetent I remember from the book. When he graduates from sniper school, he speaks for many of us when he says, "I was hooked." His leader in Saudi Arabia, Staff Sgt. Sykes (Jamie Foxx), has a simple reason for turning down a $100,000-a-year gig hanging drywall with his brother: "I love this job."

One of the great secrets about the Marine Corps is that, beneath its veneer of cynicism, it's deeply idealistic. Swofford's misfit band of brothers may seem artfully contrived—a brash Texan, a bespectacled nerd, an immigrant family man. But taking such grab-bags of Americans and molding them into a team is exactly what the Marines do... And Marines, thanks to their intrinsic brotherhood, can deal more bluntly with race than most of society, without negative undertones. Antics frequently mask this camaraderie, as when the platoon gathers around two scorpions—white Marines around an anemic-looking white one, and black Marines around a hulking black monster named "Chango"—to cheer as they battle to the death. Such is the boredom of waiting for war.

Waiting is what Jarhead is all about. When the colonel warns that "the bureaucrats have a lot of jawboning to do," I was transported back to my own vigil in the Kuwaiti desert in the early months of 2003. We passed time with the same silly formations, reckless football games, and endless conversations about girls left behind. When discussion in the movie turns to whether the war is just a bid for oil, a Marine says to his buddies, "Fuck politics. We're here. All the rest is bullshit." This rings true. Marines don't pick their battles. Swofford and the others care only about the guys to their left and right and their chances of "getting some."

When that day finally comes, and Iraqi artillery blossoms into dust clouds around the Marines' position, Swofford stands transfixed while others dive for the bottom of their holes. "My combat action," he muses, "has commenced." It seems staged, melodramatic, too perfect to be true. And yet, I saw similar reactions in Iraq. After my platoon's first firefight, we basked in the validation of all our training and waiting and sacrifice. We finally felt like real Marines.

Jarhead strives for timeliness with a resonant last line (absent from the book): "We're still in the desert." This will surely evoke wry laughs when bootleg DVDs arrive at American camps in Iraq. But when the lights come up, those audiences will go out on patrol without another thought for Swoff and his war. Today's Marines fight more than their fears.

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