the chutry experiment

I read "We are still in the desert" as a comment on how a soldier never really can leave the battlefield, even if you never even fire a shot. This was nicely highlighted by the jubilant parade homecoming, tempered by the pride and anxiety generated when the Vietnam veteran came onto the bus. I personally like thinking about the broader implications of war on the soldier (which seemed to be the film's point) rather than the political situation pertaining to Iraq, which honestly seemed almost ancillary to the film (as one character put it bluntly: "It doesn't matter. We're here."). _Three Kings_ was a far better film about the first Gulf War; Jarhead should have been the film about *soldiers* in the first Gulf War (an important distinction).

At the same time, I left wanting something more, although I too am having a hard time putting my finger on what exactly was lacking. But what I did *not* want was a film about the first Gulf War that looked to comment on the second. That would have drawn a rather careless timeline, and would have detracted from the broader point, which (I think) was to focus on the rapidly changing and technologically fearsome war and its effects on the contemporary soldier - a war that reaches far beyond the range of a simple sniper scope. There’s a lot about spectatorship (and its ties to ennui) going on there; I loved the beach chair (“Bad knees from football”), which was a nice symbol to be read in all sorts of ways. All of this done without ever resorting to that now (in)famous image of the bomb going down the air duct.

All that being said, I thought that the acting was good overall... now I want to read the book to figure out why the film narrative ultimately left me wanting. I suspect, given your assessment of the book, that I’ll find what I’m looking for in the conversations after the war.

Like you, I read the "we are still in the desert comment" in terms of the fact that the soldier can never really leave the battlefield, and the post-war conversations reflect that sentiment in a way that the final parade scene only begins to address. In particular, Swofford's conversations with "Fowler" after the war reflect Fowler's desperate need for heroism (IIRC, Fowler even appropriates many of Swofford's stories as his own in order to appear more heroic).

The scene with the Vietnam soldier is an interesting one, and I'm still trying to "read" it. The film, especially, plays up the post-Vietnam (film) anxiety, whether through music, film references (not just Apocalypse Now but also the Deer Hunter video used to coneal the sextape.

Really good points about spectatorship, too. Not just movie-watching but also the sniper sights and the beach chair.

I'm kind of curious to see Jarhead just because, by all accounts, Mendes has made an unremarkable film despite the contributions of Roger Deakins and Walter Murch. When American Beauty was first released, I developed this theory that Mendes had deliberately transcended the banal posturings of the script by creating, more or less, an aesthetic object. The film itself, I thought, was the plastic bag scene writ large, and I found it interesting (theoretically) on that level. Then I saw Road to Perdition and realized that, no, Mendes just makes really pretty and really empty films.

He's had the luck of working with really good cinematographers. Before Deakins, it was Conrad Hall in both Perdition and Beauty. And the floating plastic bag itself is--at best--an homage to an image invented by Jem Chohen, as Salon, the Washington Post, and this review all point out.

But yeah, that's a good characterization. The film is surprisingly unremarkable given the amount of talent on both sides of the camera (as well as in front of the editing table).

We saw it this weekend too. Among other things, I was interested in the depiction of the foot soldier as obsolete in an era of high-tech jet propelled war. As one of the Marines says, "by the time your rifle is ready the war will be ten miles down the road."

The US Air Force is presented as being as much of an enemy as the Iraqis: the only time the Marines are actually attacked it's by a pair of strafing US fighters (friendly fire); likewise, the horrific carnage of the wrecked Iraqi convoy is the work of the Air Force, but while the pilots are back in their air conditioned bunks it's the jarheads who have to come face to face with the consequences.

The epitome of all this is the scene where the sniper team is about the kill the two Iraqi officers. They had been sent to shoot them at least partly on the theory that the enemy unit would become demoralized and surrender en masse, thereby avoiding a bloodbath (this is explicitly stated in the film). But they're denied the opportunity to "take the shot," and instead the ground attack fighters (once again) come in and wipe out the Iraqi encampment. I took all this as a kind of acknowledgement of the import of the "marine and his rifle" rhetoric that permeates the film: the irony is the marines' way would have been more humane than the Air Force's laser-guided bombs and "precision" strikes. So in that sense too I think the film complicates the "anti-soldier" reading.

I think you're right, Matt, and the "obsolescence" of the foot soldier is something that seemed more developed in Swofford's book. But these scenes (the sniper scene in particular) certainly complicate any reading of the film as "anti-soldier."