Paul Haggis: In the Valley of Elah (2007)

[Chris Knipp]

Paul Haggis: In the Valley of Elah (2007)

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.

[oscar jubis]

Crash winning the Oscar for Mr. Haggis was a travesty. In the Valley of Elah is a better film because it's less schematic and reductive thus, as you say, more believable. The film works well to a large extent because the central role of a sincere, honest father investigating his son's disappearance fits the persona of Tommy Lee Jones to perfection. And because of what the veteran actor does with it. Haggis' screenplay eloquently dramatizes what war does to the hearts and souls of those who fight. That's the basis of any regard for In the Valley of Elah as an anti-war film.

Mr. Haggis' filmography (including his scripts for Clint Eastwood) indicates he aims for the heart; his appeal is emotional not analytical. This is not a limitation per se, except that he is often blunt and obvious, with a tendency towards overkill (literally, the expert concludes 42 stabbing wounds reach the bones of the victim but he cannot determine, because of the condition of the remains, how many more were simply flesh wounds!). The peers of the detective played by Ms. Theron are the most sexist neanderthals I can remember. Haggis' imagination seldom extends to peripheral characters like these cops and the "white trash" family of the female boxer in Million Dollar Baby. These are, to put it simply, caricatures that subtract from his films' overall worth. He is also a bit lazy when it comes to metaphors and allegories. The one used here, about David and Goliath in the valley of Elah seems quite forced to me.

[Chris Knipp]

I agree with you here except saying Theron's male coworkers are total Neanderthals seems a little overstated. Maybe you're right, though, given how you see Haggis.

But this movie actually looks a lot better after seening De Palma's Redacted at the NYFF. My review of that will be up shortly.

[mouton]

IN THE VALLEY OF ELAH
Written and Directed by Paul Haggis

Soldier: Before I went, I would never say this, but if you ask me now, I’d say we just nuke ‘em all and watch it all turn back to dust.”

Before going to Iraq, a soldier would not likely even think this, let alone say it out loud in any serious manner. The times have changed though and eyes have seen more than any one pair should. Take Jo Anne’s husband for instance. He’s just returned from Iraq to Fort Rudd, New Mexico, a town built around its army base. You might think this would make Jo Anne very happy but, much to her dismay, this is just not the case. Instead, she doesn’t feel she still knows this changed man. When she goes to the police after he snaps a dog’s neck as punishment for biting, no one listens. Instead, they snicker at her. She is enraged but her anger is not enough to rattle any one out of their apathetic trance. Despite there being a clear need for Jo Anne’s husband to get help, there just isn’t anything to be done. He’s just another returning soldier whose mental stability has been fried under the Iraq sun. This is the side of America that is not often seen – a population exhausted by the weight of the war, be that by supporting it or questioning it or participating in it. And while the fighting is taking place overseas, writer/director Paul Haggis’ IN THE VALLEY OF ELAH aims to show America’s eyes what’s been happening in their homes while their focus was elsewhere.

IN THE VALLEY OF ELAH is Haggis’s first time directing since his Best Picture winning CRASH. In the time since then, he has gone on to work on the screenplays for CASINO ROYALE and LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA. The experience seems to have taught him some valuable lessons about subtlety. While CRASH was intense and moving, it was also contrived and convenient. The pay off may have been worth the trouble but concessions were made for the bigger emotional impact. IN THE VALLEY OF ELAH does not resort to gimmicks to make its mark. Instead, the events unfold like any good mystery, where the pieces come together to reveal that what you’ve been trying to figure out all along is really just a fraction of what’s really going on. This particular mystery begins when Hank Deerfield (Tommy Lee Jones) gets a call from the Fort Deer army base, informing him that his son has gone missing after returning from active duty. Hank has no helpful information as he didn’t even know his son had come back. It becomes clear pretty quickly that something foul has happened and that Hank didn’t know his son very well at all. Yet as he gets to know his son through the clues he comes across while searching for him, Hank realizes that he knows just as little about how the army has changed as he does his son.

IN THE VALLEY OF ELAH is able to make understated commentary about the mental and emotional burden of the Iraq war thanks mostly to Haggis’ direction of his stars, Jones and Charlize Theron. Theron is a single mother and a detective who struggles daily to prove that a woman can make just as good a detective as her sloppy male counterparts. She braves the testosterone that beats down on her from all sides but it is Deerfield’s arrival that shows her how fighting against oppression is taking away from her work. Jones achieves a similar effect on Theron’s performance. He is so strong, so internally tormented and still so unfaltering despite the overwhelming evidence that is chipping away at his impression of his great American hero of a son, that Theron cannot help but step up her game as an actress to avoid looking bland in front of the veteran. As Deerfield, Jones is the silent, proud father and husband. He’s the kind of man who cannot be around a lady while simply wearing an undershirt. He is an old-fashioned army boy in a world where he can watch unscrambled video image from a digital camera his son carried with him in Iraq. All the seedy revelations he is discovering must be made proper again and resolving his two conflicting minds becomes the challenge he needs to overcome in order to find both his son and his peace of mind. Jones is not just up for this challenge; he owns it.

With its simple tone and steady pace, IN THE VALLEY OF ELAH laments the loss of America’s blanketed support and gusto for a war that was meant to protect their way of life and freedom. It is not so much a movie designed to criticize the decision to go to war in the first place. Haggis is too smart to give that tired argument. Instead, it is an expression of grief for the damage the war has weathered on the country, its citizens and the principals that it was initially meant to protect.

www.blacksheepreviews.com

** Chris ... I will read your review later **

[Chris Knipp]

Maybe I should wait till you've read my review. I don't think we're in major disagreement. Several things you say surprise me. I would never refer to criticism of the decison to attack Iraq as "that tired argument." I don't think Theron had to "step up her game" as an actress to keep up with Jones; her game is pretty stepped up to begin with. She might agree with you out of respect for Jones anyway though.
[the film] is an expression of grief for the damage the war has weathered on the country, its citizens and the principals that it was initially meant to protect.
I don't follow your use of the word "weathered." The war was never "meant to protect" US citizens. That was a completely spurious and unconvincing claim to justify the war. Some of your comments are naive or inaccuirate. You should be more cautious about what you say concerning the political situation. However, again, I don't disagree with your assessment of the movie, though other than the fact that Haggis has learned to be more subtle, I'm not sure myself how much I like In the Valley of Elah. I like the actors, and not just Jones and Theron. The young actors are strong too. Ultimately though the screenplay may be regarded as more toned down or "subtle" than that of Crash, the plot skews the argument against the war and against war in general so overtly that it seems neither balanced nor accurate. There ought to have been some soldiers who weren't turned into monsters. But we don't really see any. It's a grisly crime. True, maybe. But to focus exclusively on that still shows Haggis loading his dice. I am against the invasion and occupation of Iraq, maybe much more than you are, and I was long before it happened. But I wouldn't depict the aftermath of Iraq service in quite these terms.

[Chris Knipp]

I like the Onion's "Oscar-o-Meter" rundown on the "serious" US films upcoming before year's end. Here's there summary on In the Valley of Elah:
In The Valley Of Elah

Premise: Tommy Lee Jones plays an ex-soldier investigating the disappearance of a son who just returned from a tour of duty in Iraq. As he and put-upon single mom/police detective Charlize Theron dig deeper into the case, they discover some hard truths about how an ill-defined military mission can crush a man's soul.

Pedigree: Writer-director Paul Haggis is on a prestige-picture roll, following his screenplays for three consecutive acclaimed Clint Eastwood movies (Million Dollar Baby, Flags Of Our Fathers, and Letters From Iwo Jima, the latter of which he co-wrote) and his own Oscar-winning Crash.

Oscar-O-Meter rating: 7. Haggis is an Academy favorite, and even if the movie itself doesn't have enough juice to crack the Best Picture race, the Haggis screenplay (co-written with Mark Boal) has a decent shot. Plus Jones would seem to be a shoo-in nominee, unless his superior turn in the trickier No Country For Old Men takes precedence.

The view from TIFF: Haggis has made a solid procedural here, fraught with tantalizingly ambiguous mysteries, but it all seems a little betwixt and between—too high-minded to be an entertaining genre piece, and too tasteful to say anything earthshaking.

This will be found here:

http://www.avclub.com/content/node/67127/print/

[Johann]

I haven't seen the movie and I don't know if I will.

Films like this get made because of what Gore Vidal said:
We Remember Nothing.

Platoon already showed us how an ill-defined military mission can crush a man's soul. Why do we need a new one?
Are we not aware yet of how sick and twisted war is and what it does to people? Ever heard of Romeo Dallaire?

We Remember Nothing.
I'm really bothered by Hollywood sometimes- and I even thought of Oliver Stone in relation to this just last week.
9/11 produced an opportunity for him to make a film.
What impact has World Trade Center had on Americans?
I can't see any.
People *seem* to want to forget about the whole thing.

I'm thinking apathy is so thick and crippling that nobody has any sparks anymore. Our collective spirit has been crushed, and what is to be gained from watching a film like Elah?
More sadness, more reminders that we are in a world of shit?

How about some real bullets of films, as Oliver Stone suggested?
We need films that matter.
We need something else, something new, something radiant and unusual, a jewel of inspiration, something that blasts away apathy and really sparks an uprising of powerful positive change.

We're drowning in sadness, defeat and anger.
This is desperate, Paco.

I'm leaning more and more towards The Joker's philosophy in The Dark Knight.
You get to a point where all you want is to see the whole world burn.
You get to a point where reasoning and bargaining and diplomatic charm get you nowhere. You're fed up with circumstances and you want blood, gallons of it, flowing freely, like it did in the trailer for The Shining.

(Which by the way, is meant to symbolize the blood of centuries, the blood of genocides and war- that scene was never in the book. Kubrick put the oceans of blood in there to make a point about the barbarity of man).

[mouton]

Hey Chris ... You're right. I don't think we disagree on the film. I do disagree with your assessment that my understanding of the film or the political implications is naive. It is perhaps just misunderstood. I don't believe the war in Iraq was actually intended to protect US citizens but I do believe it was intended as an extention of the War on Terror, which was sold as a means to protect US citizens from future and supposedly imminent attacks while maintaining the democratic way of life in tact. What I loved about the film was that it focused on the ramifications of these decisions as opposed to the nature and validity of the decisions. I had not considered that Haggis had stacked the deck in his favor by eliminating any well adjusted men home from war but that does skew the weight his way.

As for that tired argument, perhaps I was too harsh in my wording. I meant to imply that the debate over whether going to war was the right answer and whether the justification was misleading or not is somewhat exhausted. One side may be right but the other is not going to admit they were wrong. At this stage in the game, I feel Haggis' approach to address what all of this fighting has done to the country is a much more valid point to address is all.

We both used the word subtle alot, even though there was nothing even remotely subtle about the closing shots of the film. These were the only images that disappointed me over all. I guess after CRASH, it is easy to toss the word subtle around ... could be my residual Brokeback anger talking though.

[Chris Knipp]

mouton,


One side may be right but the other is not going to admit they were wrong.That's not really correct either. In fact many, many people have admitted they were wrong in favoring the invasion of Iraq. These are not two never-to-meet "sides." For just one prominent example, take Thomas K. Friedman the NYTimes columnist. He was pro-invastion. He is very strongly get-out-of-Iraq now. Most Americans were on the "ivade Iraq" side just before and just after the invasion. They have since largely realized that it was a mistake, apart from the fact that the excuses for the invasion were falsified. You might have said "overly familiar" for this issue, not "tired." It's possible your language rather than your thinking that makes you sound naive or mistaken at a couple of points, but it's by your language that we must know you. Maybe you ought to be more cautious in adressing political issues in your film reviews.

Still, we do agree on this movie. And for sure we also agree completely on Brokeback anger. Notice what the Onion said last week in its "Oscar-o-Meter" feature on upcoming "serious" US films of the rest of the year (emphasis mine):
Every year, the Toronto International Film Festival offers a fairly clear picture of the upcoming awards season, as Hollywood unveils many of the serious, self-important, and occasionally half-decent films that it hopes will be considered Oscar-worthy. But in a world where Crash can slip away with Best Picture like a thief in the night, what does that term even mean? Is there much correlation between the movies that win Oscars and the movies worth caring about?

[tabuno]

As a big fan of CRASH, I thought that JARHEAD (2005) did a much better job of getting a message across about war in the same understated way that ELAH attempts to. While the performances are good, the movie is loaded down the almost stereotypical, almost unbelieveable melodrama regarding police politics. Instead, Haggis has been able to lift the traditional police procedural movie into a more loftier realm thus making it above average in quality, but it still seems to lose much of its emotional steam. A much more haunting and more powerfully presented story is the subplot about the wife complaining about her husband's treatment of their dog and it probably rated as much movie time as the main plot. The cellphone images of Iraq did not really add alot to the movie, in fact, they probably the way they were presented distracted from the primary effort to tell the story being overly clumsy. The resolution of the mystery wasn't really cleared up as the woman and her dog subplot was accomplished and offers up how much of the movie wasted its potential. While I thought the understatement was great, I enjoyed the authenticity when it was allowed to reflect it (as opposed to the stereotypical scenes), overall the movie didn't really do it for me. I did like the connection between the dog allusion that is made in the movie between how the dog in the bathtub and a later reference is made to a dog by Ortiz (another soldier in the platoon of Jone's son).

[Chris Knipp]

I also am a fan of Jarhead, and think it says things about the war not dealt with as accurately elsewhere. My review of Jarhead is here. (http://www.filmwurld.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=1565)
I'm not a fan of Crash, though. Agree the dog-molestation subplot is a telling one.