I finally saw The Hurt Locker last week and while I'd hardly say I thought it was Oscar-worthy (Inglorious Basterds was better, by a wide margin), it was definitely a very good film, telling the story of bomb-defusing soldiers in Iraq circa 2003. Jeremy Renner was nominated for an Oscar for his performance as a crazy brave team leader of a 3-person IED diffusion squad, one who repeatedly risks his life in multiple ways to try to keep bombs from blowing up and killing fellow soldiers. He's excellent in the movie, and the end of the film -- when Renner returns to America and finds it so difficult to adjust to life picking out cereal in an overstocked supermarket, is just beautifully written and acted and he ends up re-enlisting to head back to war. Unfortunately, the movie was a little disappointing in its storytelling -- there basically was no story, we just see a sequence of scenes of bomb diffusion and related events, but we never get any exposition about why they do the things they do to diffuse a bomb, and when the bombs are supposed to exactly explode. The opening scene shows Guy Pearce in full astronaut protection suit walking out to set off a bomb in the middle of a courtyard (after clearing out the neighborhood) but an insurgent with a cell phone sets it off before he can get back to safety and he blows up (astronaut suit and all). The team (now with Renner in charge) fears this event recurring for the rest of the film, but really do little to prevent it, and it seems like not only could an insurgent blow up the bomb (and Renner) at any point, it also seems like someone could shoot him, especially when he removes his suit (frequently) to get a better look at diffusing the bombs. So theoretically the bombs were set and left but then when would they go off? It's never explained. So I was confused throughout. I think that perhaps the point of it all is to show that the soldiers really had no idea what they were doing, or why, and that every Arab around them was a potential killer (and is shown to be, through the soldiers' eyes) which is a horrible situation to be in and I'm sure approximates the experience of being at war in Iraq. Or anywhere. In that way, it was an excellent movie, completely harrowing, and the acting and characterization were wonderful. But I just think it lacked an overall dramatic arc that would have made it less confusing to this viewer.
I've also been watching The Pacific on HBO, a 10-episode mini-series about our war with Japan during World War II. I'm a few episodes behind but from what I've watched, it's one of the best programs on television this year. It looks absolutely stunning on my widescreen HDTV, and the stereo sound is great too, and it reminds me of how good TV can look when it's done right. But the show itself echoes The Hurt Locker as well by showing a soldier's eye view of war, right down to not having a clue what they are doing there and why they are fighting there (specifically, on a mostly deserted island in the Pacific called Guadalcanal). They just end up wanting to kill every "Jap" they see. The racism -- or what, looking back seems like racism -- the soldiers express toward their enemy has a strong parallel with The Hurt Locker's soldiers' views of Arabs, and the complete inability for a soldier on the ground to really know what the greater scheme of their purpose for fighting there at that place is the same, whether the greater war is for a greater cause, or in the case of the Iraq war, probably is not. The battles that take place basically come down to "kill or be killed" and the poor soldiers who survive end up with so many battle scars that they are tough to distinguish from the ones who died, on both sides.
Inglorious Basterds, of course, is a wickedly plotted revenge fantasy that plays with World War II without showing the soldiers on both sides, and maybe that's why it was so enjoyable. As wonderful as The Pacific is, visually and dramatically, I am behind on viewing it because it is so harrowing. And The Hurt Locker, while wonderful for so many reasons, is not a movie I will ever watch again, because it is so harrowing. War fucking sucks for the soldiers involved, and these media portrayals that come closest to showing how harrowing it is are difficult to watch. I can't even imagine how much worse it actually is to be there.
We have 150,000+ soldiers still in Iraq and Afghanistan right now, nearly 9 years after 9/11. World War II was over within 4 years after Pearl Harbor, so it doesn't make much sense to me why we are still in Iraq and Afghanistan, especially since we elected Barack Obama to pull us out of Iraq (if not necessarily Afghanistan, although there seems to be little point why we are still there either). Of course, World War II was a "good" war that may have saved the very idea of democracy in the world and did stop Hitler from continuing his attempt to eliminate all Jews from Europe, but for the soldiers involved, it was just as much hell as Iraq and Afghanistan are now, despite the noblest of intentions.
As a country, we've continued fighting ever since World War II. It seems like every lull of a few years just allows production to ramp up again for another war machine and another generation of young men (and women) forced to fight for -- something, I'm not sure what and I'm not sure it matters -- to keep the war machine going. No president has been able to stop it. No amount of protesting has done much of any good. George Bush may have brought us to war under false pretenses, but pretty much every single person in the country (including me) was completely in favor of invading Afghanistan after 9/11 and we didn't think much of the consequences (that we'd still be there 9 years later, with 100,000 troops living the lives that we see in The Hurt Locker). I remember saying to someone back then something like the Russians would have never done this -- these Muslims are like animals, back when Russia was our enemy they would never have flown a plane into the World Trade Center. Of course, the Soviet Union wouldn't have done that, because we had the power to strike back with force and they wouldn't have chosen that, but Jesus, you don't have to look back too far to see some equally evil atrocities committed by the Soviets on their own citizens (under Stalin), or by other white Anglos like, I don't know, one Mr. Hitler. So it was a stupid statement. And I was stupid. And war is stupid, for everyone involved, and yet it goes on.
It's not realistic to project a world without war. Even if we as a nation were smart enough not to invade Iraq and not to invade Afghanistan, we still would have needed soldiers to go into Afghanistan to take out Al Qaeda and the Taliban that was hiding them and then what happens then... I don't know. And we as a nation sat idly by while genocide happened in Rwanda and Somalia, but we stepped in with soldiers to prevent it in Bosnia (successfully). That's still war, soldiers were still involved, and if we went into Rwanda to stop the hundreds of thousands of human deaths, many soldiers would have died. Which cause is worth it? Which fight is noble enough? For the soldiers, whether or not we were supposed to be in Iraq or Rwanda or northern France or Guadalcanal is irrelevant. They are the ones who are dying. And even the survivors are irreparably damaged for the rest of their lives for simply fighting.
I don't have any profound answers and I don't know if there are any profound answers. Less war would be great. Pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan would be great. But it won't stop us from fighting. And it won't stop us from ignoring the fighting that is going on as we move on to other, more important issues in our lives, like which whore Tiger Woods banged last week. There are some arguments about the meaning behind this song below, which makes me hesitant to post it. My interpretation is that the song, written around 2004/05, is an indictment of both the policy decisions that send soldiers to Iraq, specifically by the Bush government, as well as the general ignorance of the public that simply says "God bless our soldiers" and moves on with their daily lives without bearing any brunt of the sacrifice themselves. Some listeners believe it's an indictment of the soldiers themselves who fight in these wars and I guess you can interpret it that way, but I believe it's sung out of respect for the soldiers, or at least out of a hope that somehow, some way, we might see less wars in the future. Some way in which The Hurt Locker is a piece of fiction, and not a harrowing reminder that somewhere a world away from where we are blogging about the cycling we watch on our big screen HDTVs, people are living in hell, on both sides of every war. They need to come home.
"God Bless Our Dead Marines" by A Silver Mt. Zion (c) 2005
They put angels in the electric chair
The electric chair, the electric chair
Straight up angels in the electric chair
The electric chair, the electric chair
They put angels in the electric chair
The electric chair, the electric chair
Straight up angels in the electric chair
The electric chair, the electric chair
And no one knew or no one cared
But burning stars lit up their hair
And burning stars lit up their hair
And crawled to heaven on golden stairs
And oh, how we to and fro
To and fro, to and fro
Oh, how we to and fro
To and fro, to and fro
Oh, how we to and fro
To and fro, to and fro
Oh, how we to and fro
To and fro, to and fro
This is our torched estates
We're your sweet mistakes
And all them vulgar kings on their dirty thrones
Who among us will avenge Ms. Nina Simone?
And all them vulgar kings on their dirty thrones
Who among us will avenge Ms. Nina Simone?
There's fresh meat in the club tonight
God bless our dead marines
Someone had an accident above the burning trees
While somewhere distant, peacefully
Our vulgar princes sleep
Dead kids don't get photographed
God bless our dead marines
The hungry and the hanged
The damaged and the done
Striving along this spinning rock
Tumbling past the sun
Get through this life without killing anyone
And consider yourself golden
Lost a friend to cocaine
Couple friends to smack
Troubled hearts map deserts
And they rarely do come back
Lost a friend to oceans
Lost a friend to hills
Lost a friend to suicide
Lost a friend to pills
Lost a friend to monsters
Lost a friend to shame
Lost a friend to marriage
Lost a friend to blame
Lost a friend to worry
And lost a friend to wealth
Lost a friend to stubborn pride
And then I lost myself
I love my dog and she loves me
The world's a mess and so are we
She tumbles long green, muddy fields
Sick with joy and glee
And as she dreams sweet puppy dreams
Whimpering gently
There's fresh meat in the club tonight
God bless our dead marines
Someone had an accident above the burning trees
While somewhere distant, peacefully
Our vulgar princes sleep
Dead kids don't get photographed
God bless this century
When the world is sick
Can't no one be well?
But I dreamt we was all beautiful and strong
When the world is sick
Can't no one be well?
But I dreamt we was all beautiful and strong
When the world is sick
Can't no one be well?
But I dreamt we was all beautiful and strong...
Part 1
Part 2 -- the best part!!
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