American Sniper
I watched Clint Eastwood's American Sniper last night. Woke up this morning to read it has been nominated in the Best Picture category of this year's Oscars. How fond of Clint the members of the Academy must be to go that far off track.
I read Peter Bradshaw's two-star review of the film in today's Guardian. I didn't agree with all of the Guardian critic's analysis although I do think his two-star rating is much nearer the mark than an Oscar nomination. As often happens I felt compelled to comment on the views of someone writing in my favourite newspaper.
Should I be worried that I'm one of those people who leave below the line comments in response to newspaper articles? Probably. But at least I don't rant. Here's my attempt at a measured and reasoned response to Mr Bradshaw's original review.
I may be in a minority on this one but
here goes. There are huge problems with the movie but not, I think,
those Peter Bradshaw describes.
I didn't think it was dull (at least when it's in Iraq) but it
certainly is derivative. We have a SEAL training camp straight out of An
Officer And A Gentleman, a wedding dance from The Deer Hunter, a touch
of Hurt Locker here, a bit of Zero Dark Thirty there. I think too that
Bradley Cooper does well with the raw material he was given and I quite
took to Sienna Miller's return to centre stage. Overall it struck me as a
technically competent but pretty average American war movie of a very
old and completely illusory type.
The super-size failures, however, are the script and directorial
choices that led to the creation of this sanitised, delusional fantasy.
Mr Eastwood's team has given us Chris Kyle's ghost written autobiography
as some kind of cinema verite. I've no doubt that Kyle was a brave - if
self-declared "redneck" - soldier of the type Republicans cherish. But
there's not a hint anywhere in the movie of the more complex reality we
can find behind the words of any unreliable, first-person narrator including Chris Kyle. That means, for instance, verifiable facts such as
spending nights locked up in jail or trouble with booze or the legal
dispute with Jesse Ventura don't feature anywhere in the movie to spoil
the director's picture of a righteous warrior; not to mention Mr
Eastwood's re-imaginings of events in Iraq e.g. the first kill in the
movie has a boy added that doesn't even feature in Kyle's own
autobiography presumably to give the film character's arc the contrast
the movie needs via the incident with another boy and a rocket launcher
later on.
And the truly fascinating, genuinely interesting and more complex
reality of Mr Kyle's life and death - on American soil and not at the
hands of the Iraqi "savages" he disliked so much but murdered by a
fellow American at a gun range - gets reduced to one line of white text
as the screen fades to black at the end of more than two hours of
historical revisionism.
There's an interesting movie to be made about that Hellish American
tragedy but American Sniper isn't that movie. It's Green Berets for the
21st Century - more subtle in its assertion of American exceptionalism,
more nuanced in its story telling, more aware of the forces reigned
against such simplistic readings of events but just as deeply delusional.
Fortunately, no one will watch American Sniper in two years time and
five years from now no one but the cast and crew will remember it was
made.
I read Peter Bradshaw's two-star review of the film in today's Guardian. I didn't agree with all of the Guardian critic's analysis although I do think his two-star rating is much nearer the mark than an Oscar nomination. As often happens I felt compelled to comment on the views of someone writing in my favourite newspaper.
Should I be worried that I'm one of those people who leave below the line comments in response to newspaper articles? Probably. But at least I don't rant. Here's my attempt at a measured and reasoned response to Mr Bradshaw's original review.
I may be in a minority on this one but here goes. There are huge problems with the movie but not, I think, those Peter Bradshaw describes.
I didn't think it was dull (at least when it's in Iraq) but it certainly is derivative. We have a SEAL training camp straight out of An Officer And A Gentleman, a wedding dance from The Deer Hunter, a touch of Hurt Locker here, a bit of Zero Dark Thirty there. I think too that Bradley Cooper does well with the raw material he was given and I quite took to Sienna Miller's return to centre stage. Overall it struck me as a technically competent but pretty average American war movie of a very old and completely illusory type.
The super-size failures, however, are the script and directorial choices that led to the creation of this sanitised, delusional fantasy. Mr Eastwood's team has given us Chris Kyle's ghost written autobiography as some kind of cinema verite. I've no doubt that Kyle was a brave - if self-declared "redneck" - soldier of the type Republicans cherish. But there's not a hint anywhere in the movie of the more complex reality we can find behind the words of any unreliable, first-person narrator including Chris Kyle. That means, for instance, verifiable facts such as spending nights locked up in jail or trouble with booze or the legal dispute with Jesse Ventura don't feature anywhere in the movie to spoil the director's picture of a righteous warrior; not to mention Mr Eastwood's re-imaginings of events in Iraq e.g. the first kill in the movie has a boy added that doesn't even feature in Kyle's own autobiography presumably to give the film character's arc the contrast the movie needs via the incident with another boy and a rocket launcher later on.
And the truly fascinating, genuinely interesting and more complex reality of Mr Kyle's life and death - on American soil and not at the hands of the Iraqi "savages" he disliked so much but murdered by a fellow American at a gun range - gets reduced to one line of white text as the screen fades to black at the end of more than two hours of historical revisionism.
There's an interesting movie to be made about that Hellish American tragedy but American Sniper isn't that movie. It's Green Berets for the 21st Century - more subtle in its assertion of American exceptionalism, more nuanced in its story telling, more aware of the forces reigned against such simplistic readings of events but just as deeply delusional.
Fortunately, no one will watch American Sniper in two years time and five years from now no one but the cast and crew will remember it was made.