The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015. Remaining movies: 225 Days to go: 226
Movie #152: Jarhead
Here’s a funny story about how I’m a terrible person: Jarhead is not my movie. It belongs to my father-in-law and I borrowed it no fewer than four years ago because I’d never seen it, and in that time, I still never watched it, never returned it, never even opened it. But I kept it on my shelf and even packed it in a box and moved it to my new house so I could, eventually, theoretically, watch it. I considered returning it once Jarhead began the rotations on HBO and Showtime, or when it became available on Netflix and I could just watch it from there whenever. Still didn’t return it, still didn’t watch it. If not for this project, I still wouldn’t have gotten around to watching it, I can almost guarantee. I would consider it good news that I could now return the movie in good faith, but at this point I think he owns it on blu-ray. I’m really a terrible, awful, horrible person.
Jarhead is one of those movies that intrigues me based on its cast and crew, but turns me off based on its subject matter, and so I find myself wanting to watch it but putting it off indefinitely. Jake Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard are interesting actors who rarely if ever take on uninteresting projects. Sam Mendes is a very particular, thoughtful director who has helmed films that are quiet and pensive while boiling just beneath the surface. And Roger Deakins is one of the most celebrated cinematographers of all time, known for the stark beauty of his photography and lighting, but not necessarily pictured as the go-to guy for war films. Then again, despite my preconceptions, Jarhead is not the typical war film.
Jarhead is kind of a cross between Full Metal Jacket and Saving Private Ryan in that it is gritty and uncompromising in its depiction of the brutalities and realities of being in a war zone, but absurdist and sort of funny in its depiction of the insanity that brews and builds from being in a situation so insular, so stressful, so primed for violence and then denied it. It’s about the pointlessness of being kept away from loved ones, of hurrying up and waiting while the rest of the world spins on. It’s about the anger, the frustration of not being yourself anymore, of not knowing who you are or who anyone else is or even how to act, and yet being completely dependent on the people in your company — for safety, for companionship, for reassurance, for strength, for intelligent discourse, for everything — even though they’re all just as messed up as you are. It’s about going home to a life that doesn’t make sense to you anymore and trying to fit in again, even though you can’t.
Sarsgaard and Gyllenhaal are unsurprisingly good, and Jamie Foxx is nothing short of riveting as a staff sergeant who lives and breathes the Marines, who believes in the life and the work. I found myself watching his performance and wondering about this man, wondering what kind of man it must take to walk that line, and then he addressed it himself toward the end of the film. It felt right and good to get to that place, to get to that resolution that he knows who he is and he acknowledges not all soldiers are like him. It made the movie’s epilogue even more effective.
There’s no real resolution here, no real answer, which definitely feels true to Mendes’s work (I haven’t read the original novel, so I can’t really judge it by that), and the cinematography is striking in its sameness — the desert is everywhere, even in the sky, even in the faces and uniforms and tents of the armed forces. Everything is sand colored (even the dreams, even the vomit). The one scene where Swof (Gyllenhaal) walks through a burned out bomb site — complete with charred bodies and vehicles — is visually arresting because of the sand-colored footprints he leaves in the blackened earth. Simply amazing.
I can’t say Jarhead is a movie I’ll watch again anytime soon, but I’m glad I did finally get around to watching it. Oddly enough, it was both interesting in its acting and artistry and distinctly Not My Thing, never managing to land solidly on one side or the other. In that way, it’s kind of like Swof’s experiences in Iraq, I guess.
Welcome to the suck.
Viable Option 