Entertainment, Movies - Navy Times

Exploding movie clichés

The actor Ben Foster, who stars in the unflinching war film “The Messenger,” was at an airport bar recently when he spotted a uniformed soldier on layover and bought him a beer.

“We talked about friends, about fathers, about life,” Foster says. “Before I made this film, that soldier would have loomed as a superhero figure to me, and I would never have approached. But now, I see him for the human he is, a guy figuring out what to say to his dad when he sees him, a guy grappling with life.”

“If there is any message to my movie, it’s that these soldiers are husbands, wives, sons and daughters. They’re coming home and will keep coming home, and they need our care.”

Three movies humming with Oscar buzz take dead aim at this humanizing theme: “The Messenger,” “The Hurt Locker” and “Brothers.” They are war movies in name only, devoid of epic battle scenes and mood-swelling heroics. The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan provide locations and back story, but the explicit mission of each film is to show the savage psychological effects of battle on a specific set of people.

“The Messenger” follows Foster and co-star Woody Harrelson as the two vets make their rounds informing NOKs (next of kin) that their loved ones have died. “The Hurt Locker” chronicles the hair-raising exploits of a small team of bomb-defusing experts in Iraq. And “Brothers,” a faithful remake of a successful Danish film by the same name, finds a traumatized veteran coping with a sibling who, in his absence, has taken his patriarchal role.

This trio has made a mark with awards committees and audiences movie-goers. But other recent war films (In the Valley of Elah, Rendition, The Kingdom) haven’t clicked to the same degree. So why them, and why now?

A step toward healing

Hollywood often is a barometer of the public mood, suggesting that as the conflicts drag toward the beginning of their second decade, the public is ready to face their effects head-on, says Michael Taylor, a film producer and chairman of the film and TV production department at the University of Southern California.

“You always have to ask if a given movie is creating or reflecting the culture, and it’s clear these three truly reflect it,” he says. “Movies about World War II tended to be escapist. But these films balance heroism with tragedy and emotional pain, which is much closer to a veteran’s reality.”

Though Brothers tackles this exact tough theme to sobering effect, people want to watch: It has made $27.8 million to date.

“Maybe the tide has turned,” says “Brothers” director Jim Sheridan. “Movies like ours seem to be getting a foothold with audiences. Maybe there’s less guilt or mixed feelings out there now, and more a sense of owning up to what these guys deal with.”

“The Hurt Locker,” directed by Kathryn Bigelow, is arguably the most traditional of the three movies, blending Hollywood-style thrills (will the bombs explode?) with walks through emotional minefields (will our heroes implode?).

“I’m very sympathetic to sane people put in insane situations,” says screenwriter Mark Boal, who fashioned Hurt Locker from journalist tours of duty in Iraq. “As our movie points out, these are often people who are bearing the full cost of war. And because we have a volunteer army, it’s often the same people enduring the same things, over and over again.”

The tight focus of these movies on soldiers helps depoliticize them and broaden their audience, particularly when it comes to veterans, says Sean Stevenson, an Iraq war vet who is president of For the Win Media, which helped market “The Messenger” to soldiers.

“Every vet is skeptical about every war movie, because generally there’s no such thing as an apolitical war flick,” he says.

Stevenson got trailers and then movie screeners to a range of military bloggers, many of whom embraced the movie. “For some reason, Vietnam veterans have really claimed this film as their own,” he says. “Overall, there’s just a sense of, ‘Anything to help our veterans get the help they need to cope with what they’ve been through.’”

It didn’t hurt that the script — co-written by Israeli army veteran Oren Moverman, who also directed the movie — got the support of the Department of Defense, which provided Casualty Notification experts.

“I was familiar with these themes but was amazed at how disconnected many Americans are from them,” Moverman says. “It was a natural to craft a story on returning soldiers and their families.”

Few tales of returning servicemen are as wrenching as “Brothers,” which adds delicate questions about marital fidelity to the devastating effects of wartime captivity. The film’s star, Tobey Maguire, says he sought out a mindset in which humans are forced to confront their darkest nature.

“These are people whose fundamental view of what humans are capable of has changed,” he says. “These vets come back and they’re ashamed, while the rest of us just don’t understand them. I did this movie to shine a light on that. These people are overseas because we’ve asked them to go. We are responsible for that. So now, how are we going to help them?”

For Jeff Hall, that armed forces fraternity remains the front line for the battle against post-traumatic stress. The Army major, whose tours in Iraq led to domestic issues and thoughts of suicide, is a spokesman for the Real Warriors Campaign, an Army program aimed at eliminating the stigma of seeking out psychological health care. For Hall, Brothers proved a bridge too far.

“I walked out, it was just too close to home,” he says. “I grew up fascinated with war movies, and they probably pushed me into the service. Now I see them differently. And while no movie can capture war, I’m glad for the awareness they can raise.”

‘A form of war porn’

Just be sure you realize that what is on the screen doesn’t even come close to conveying reality, says Chris Hedges, veteran war correspondent and author of “War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning.”

“The Hurt Locker” opens with a Hedges quote: “War is a drug.”

“All war movies are a form of war porn that can’t convey the fear, the chaos or anything else that’s real,” he says. “I’m not saying filmmakers shouldn’t embark on such projects. But don’t mistake them for war. They’re shadows.”