Fictional Films About Iraq and the War on Terrorism

[pemmican]

Dunno how people feel about political threads on this board, but I had a chance to interview Joe Dante awhile back about his Masters of Horror episode, HOMECOMING. He made the interesting point -- perhaps already discussed here -- that things are very different now than they were in America in the 1970s, because THEN, there were lots of fictional features criticizing America's involvement in Viet Nam. To his and to my knowledge, HOMECOMING was the only non-documentary work to tackle the war in Iraq (JARHEAD and other such films deal with the first Gulf War, not this one). I would take this as a grotesque failing of the American film industry -- a sign of gutlessness, conservatism, etc. -- were it not for the fact that there are lots of DOCUMENTARIES about the war in Iraq (THE OIL FACTOR, WHY WE FIGHT, FAHRENHEIT 9/11, etc). Since UNITED 93 is opening soon -- about the fourth plane, the one that the passengers apparently brought down -- I'm wondering what people make of the current climate for criticizing the war in film.

1. Are there fictional features other than HOMECOMING that I'm unaware of? Are there any upcoming that people are aware of?
2. Why are there so few fictional features on the topic, when there are several documentaries? Is this a good sign or a bad sign? Is it related to the horrible failure of American news media to do anything significant to challenge Bush, the war, etc.?
3. The Viet Nam war had been going on a LONG TIME before people started making films about it... Since the Iraq war looks like it will be going on a LONG TIME as well, will there be more films in the future...?
4. It strikes me that right now even people on the left (like me) just kinda want to forget this war is happening, since it's grotesque and awful and all our best efforts led to nothing; the juggernaut does not care what we think. Even HOMECOMING seems in a way misguided -- an ENTERTAINING piece of anti-war activism, but -- in fact, stronger measures are needed; entertaining public protests like this only point up their own meaninglessness, their own inadequacy. The Republicans have shown that they'll do what they will, regardless of what anyone says. Does this play a factor in the relative silence of the media?

By the way, I'm a Canadian, so if you need to launch an ad-hominem attack, take that into account.

A.

[javelin]

Remember, though, that only one film about Vietnam came out during the Vietnam War. And it was the John Wayne Patriot-Fest, The Green Berets. The Vietnam criticisms didn't begin until after the war.

[tryavna]

You raise a really interesting question, but I find that your (or, rather, Joe Dante's) analogy to the Vietnam War somewhat misleading. In point of fact, the only movie specifically about Vietnam that was made during U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War was John Wayne's The Green Berets -- hardly an intelligent treatment of the subject. (Still, it was inarguably a politically committed one, even if you happen to disagree with its politics.) Certainly, there were lots of films being made in the late 60s and early 70s that were "about" Vietnam in an oblique way (Bonnie and Clyde for violence, MASH and Catch-22 for military ethics, etc.). But one could argue that they were even less about Vietnam than, say, Jarhead is about Bush's current war(s). At any rate, it wasn't until the mid- to late-70s that we began seeing any films about American involvement in Vietnam, and that was well after our direct involvement had more or less ended.

I guess a fairer comparison would be WWII -- since lots of movies were made about the war as it was going on. Then again, most of those movies were uncritical propoganda. And probably needed to be at the time.

EDIT: Ah, I see Javelin has just (barely) beaten me to the punch. Oh, well, we were both on the same wavelength.

[pemmican]

Hm... Well, Dante mentioned DEATH DREAM, actually directed by Canadian Bob "Porky's" Clark, which came out in 1974, a year before the Viet Nam war ended. It's also a horror film, about a vet who returns home changed (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068457/). I know of, but haven't seen, Haskell Wexler's MEDIUM COOL -- it surely brings up the war? Brian de Palma's GREETINGS, which I have seen, is all about dodging the draft (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063036/).which is also a theme in ALICE'S RESTAURANT... Scanning around, there ARE fictional features that were made before the war ended, but I haven't seen any of them: some minor-sounding thing from the 1960s called A YANK IN VIETNAM (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058761/), Robert Downey's STICKS AND BONES(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0149145/), about "a young man who returns home from Viet Nam blind." And it turns out Oliver Stone even did something in 1971, a short called LAST YEAR IN VIET NAM (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058761/). So I don't know about this "only THE GREEN BERETS" thing...

However, it's true, now that you mention it, all the major anti-Viet Nam war films I was thinking of were made after the war -- COMING HOME, WHO'LL STOP THE RAIN, and so forth. I'm surprised to see that Henry Jaglom's TRACKS was released in 1976 -- it "feels" older than that -- anyone know if it was shot earlier and shelved?

No one knows about other films coming up?

A.

[pemmican]

...and then of course there's PUNISHMENT PARK, made in the US in 1970. While it's not technically "about" VietNam, and the director wasn't American, it's some pretty incendiary, politically-engaged cinema. Nothing like that these days...

A.

[Galen Young]

[pemmican]

WINTER SOLDIER is really amazing -- it's just Vets talking about what they did, but that's enough.

A.

[putney]

Hiroshi Teshigahara's "Summer soldiers" (1972) about american soldiers stationed in japan , and the underground movement to help those who went awol.


putney

[Gregory]

Everyone seems to be forgetting about the documentary In the Year of the Pig. Winter Soldier came out later but was also during the war. These were not given extremely wide distribution but it's safe to say that the criticisms did begin during the war, but they did not trickle much into the film industry which was pretty exclusive then. There is much more nowadays in terms of independent media, but the mainstream has gotten even more rigidly contained by its corporate ownership, as authors such as Ben Bagdikian and Robert McChesney have shown. The related issue of public protest is different in recent times than with Vietnam (when it took years for substantial protest to build up) because there were immense worldwide protests against the current phase of the Iraq war before it began, and these have continued. I don't think these (largely symbolic) protests are meaningless as pemmican stated but I do agree that they are inadequate in themselves to achieve the goal of ending the war. They are only one component of serious activism which also involves reaching out to soldiers' families, campus counter-recruitment efforts, grassroots media work, and so on. Many documentaries that present the case against the war (or are about broader themes) are intended as organizing tools for activist outreach efforts, and they have played an important part.
Dramatic, fictional (or fictionalized) films also have a big impact. For example, the debate on nuclear energy in the U.S. was greatly intensified by the fact that the Three Mile Island accident coincided with the release of The China Syndrome. The film helped bring what occurred at TMI into the public debate. I think pemmican is on the right track in point #2 of the opening post. This general absence of political films on a lot of subjects demonstrates a damaging apathy on most of our parts, including the majority of filmmakers who subscribe to the spurious view that being an artist precludes one from saying anything definite about moral/social/political matters.

[zedz]

Certainly, there were lots of films being made in the late 60s and early 70s that were "about" Vietnam in an oblique way (Bonnie and Clyde for violence, MASH and Catch-22 for military ethics, etc.).

And in some cases the selection of a different war was little more than a glass fig-leaf, as in Dalton Trumbo's Johnny Got His Gun. It's hard to imagine any viewer in 1971 thinking that this film was actually about WWI.

[Gregory]

That has been a common technique, but Johnny Got His Gun was about the institutions of war and imperialism themselves, I believe, more than any specific war. Trumbo wrote the book just prior to the outbreak of World War II to draw on the collective experience of the First World War to show that, aside from the historical circumstances, some means are just too brutal to be justified by the ends they have (occasionally) served. He made the film, as you say, in 1971 because the story continued to be relevant. It would be just as timely now if it were re-made or even just released on DVD.

[Carson Dyle]

Even if there weren't many films that directly tackled the Vietnam War, anger at the war and the "system" energized the creative community in a way that helped make the early ‘70s one of the most fertile periods in American film.

Nowadays, people who are anti-war appear to be more numb than angry. In fact, people in general seem numb. There's a strange sense of helplessness pervading everything, and I've noticed it seeping into films. In the old days (the 90's) you at least had a shot at outrunning the killer in a horror movie. Nowadays, you're locked in a room and tortured. Jurassic Park was fun. War of the Worlds was a sad and depressing 9/11 parable. And look at TV. All those crime shows that share the same fetishistic fascination with how the victim suffered. Everyone seems to be at the mercy of forces beyond their control in 2006.

I think it's this sense of helplessness that's precluding meaningful art or even dialogue about the war. (Mass marketed art, anyway.) Maybe in another couple of years…

[zedz]

It would be just as timely now if it were re-made or even just released on DVD.

Is it not readily available? I picked up a DVD in a bargain bin a few months ago. Bare bones, but acceptable transfer, as I recall.

[bunuelian]

The big anti-war films that the average film-viewer would cite (Apocalpyse Now, Platoon) have been made with the cooperation of the US military. There's no way the military will cooperate with an anti-war film while men and women are still in the field being killed. And I don't blame them.

I think it would be a lot easier to question the domestic policies of the Bush admin than to try to make an anti-Iraq War film right now. Such films have already been made and I don't think I need to name them here.

But no major Hollywood studio is going to make a film doubting the efficacy of the supposed "war on terror" in Iraq right now, under the circumstances, because it won't sell. It has nothing to do with politics - it has to do with marketing. The audiences will not buy a film that both Democrats and Republicans are forced, as a matter of course, to reject as unpatriotic. It's a business.

[Gregory]

Where do you live, zedz? I've never seen any release of it in R1, although I know there's a terrible quality yet moderately expensive British release as well as a so-so French one that I've never bothered to buy.

[zedz]

I guess it must be this Australian edition.

[pemmican]

There's a JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN used on Amazon, tho' I don't know what it is, exactly --

Johnny Got His Gun

I disagree with the poster above who says films criticizing Iraq wouldn't sell. Tho' I do think people are dispirited, I think there's a lot of anger and disillusionment out there.

I guess in a VERY indirect way HOSTEL is informed by the war in Iraq and what Abu Ghraib did to America's image internationally... but it's strictly from a self-pitying perspective; Europe gets the blame, and America gets to see itself as the victim, not the perpetrator, of torture... I thought it was ultimately a reactionary film. Odd, really -- I don't think of the horror genre as being a useful vehicle for reactionary sentiments...

It's interesting -- past discussion board experiences have gotten me in all manner of trouble when I've posted semi-political stuff... It's nice to see how calm and civilised everyone is on this board!

A.

[ben d banana]

From the initial post:

(JARHEAD and other such films deal with the first Gulf War, not this one)

Hence the lack of discussion of Three Kings.

[HerrSchreck]

It could write on & on about this subject on a number of levels-- it just remains for one to decide how deep he wants to go into the truth of this matter, and from what angle he wants to enter it.

It's not so much that there were historical situations where Hollywood went immediately to work looking to undermine a brand new war effort-- that's studio suicide, historically. In the A FILMMAKERS APOCALYPSE, Milius talks about how he & Lucas & Coppola were actually talking about shooting the film APOC NOW in VietNam... while VietNam was raging ("we probably woulda just gotten there in time for Tet" in typical Miliusian gung-ho boyish machismo). He noted-- aside from the lunacy of trying to shoot a fictional film in a war zone-- that the film couldn't get made in any location during the war as "film studios are not noted for their social courage."

That was then this is now, and the war in Iraq is an animal of an entirely different species. Of course we all know that Bush/Pentagon & co went in despite the highly detailed warnings of State Dept/UN/The Whole Of The Educated World regarding the trouble they would be buying for themselves by breaking the Hussein-corked pressure cooker of Iraq, but they refused to listen... and now every single thing predicted to go wrong has gone wrong. That's all pretty obvious, and evident in every organ of the news today (saturdays 4/8 NYTimes details the total ex post facto victory of the State Dept vs the Pentagon in the war of ideas viz the reconstruction of Iraq errors & future war-planning).

The issue of the media being not necessarily restricted to an examination of merely Why no antiwar films, but why no rational discussion of the extremist agenda of Bush administration-- why this seething petulant radical was given carte blanche to rip apart and reconstruct in his own image anything and everything his resentful heart desired in any and all areas of govermnent which were formerly chugging along quite smoothly. Like the government was his & his sliver radical base's own playtoy to do Whatever Whenever, in complete secrecy. That is the failure of the media over the past five years-- a problem which the Iraq war is but one of the more visible parts.

The issue to my view has a lot to due with the successful relegation, by conservatives, of healthy skepticism for government to the theoretical loony bin. Politicians used to be the biggest goofballs on the face of the earth as far as kids were concerned-- the absolute antithesis of Cool. Anyone who trusted a lying politician was a blind pop corn john who wore buckle shoes and didn't get laid and Loved The System.

Today politicians have successfully overcome their social handicap by turning it completely around-- anyone who even publicly hinted at distrusting the government in the years 2001-2005 was a radical freak who hated his country. Senators & governors and mayors and firemen and cops (cops!) were heroes, the greatest dudes on the face of the earth. People who actually thought deep about the problems in current government were sushi-eating, arrogant, book educated northeastern liberal faggots, or were wild eyed hippie burnouts. Senators are movie stars now. TV shows turn the Pentagon (and the White House) into the bin of idols and heroes. This was unthinkable in the skepticism of even 20 yrs ago.

There is a shadenfreude in the press where folks love to pounce on an emotional moment, perceived indescretion or radical interlude that allows them to laugh as a group at an embarassing gaffe that requires work to recover from. Simple concern for government can be seen as a gaffe in and of itself if it carries a certain aroma of devotion to it. The Dean Scream-- what the hell was that? Michael Moore-- folks in vast numbers will not even watch a film of his because of the way he's portrayed in the media... an excessively emotional person who is painted as ranting. It's a kind of schadenfreude-fear, where studios & newsbureaus are afraid to be associated with unique voices who feel it is their duty to Tell The Truth Loudly. Yesterdays tepid mavericks are simple cuckoos today. And forget about actual prophets & visionaries.. not a user freindly time.

Part of this is also due to a very specific paradigm in the presentation of the 'news' nowadays. While erecting a vast network of right-biased news organs, the conservative movement have pressured the networks into staying out of the public dialog in the name of "objectiivity". If a network or newspaper pointed out the lunacy of a right wing idea, they'd scream 'bias! this is supposed to be slant-free news'. By this means, non-political ideas of straight-up common sense which formerly would be commented upon, a general sense of right and wrong, has vanished from the mainstream media. Studios & newsbureaus have been bullied into simple reporting, with the idea that there is no Right or Wrong, only Right & Left. By this means eyebrows raise only with great fear, and usually only when it is too late (Iraq a perfect example... now everyone is speaking up. Duh!)

The windup has been that the worst president this country has ever seen has been given the greatest amount of freedom to do whatever he pleases by congress & the media-- and in complete secrecy.

[Fletch F. Fletch]

The Guardian has an article online about 9/11/Katrina conspiracies that are being made into movies: http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/fea ... 99,00.html

[Fletch F. Fletch]

The Voice's review of United 93: http://www.villagevoice.com/film/0616,lim,72901,20.html

[gubbelsj]

The issue of the media being not necessarily restricted to an examination of merely Why no antiwar films, but why no rational discussion of the extremist agenda of Bush administration-- That is the failure of the media over the past five years-- a problem which the Iraq war is but one of the more visible parts.

I'm curious, HerrSchreck, what you and others thought about the self-congratulation at the recent Oscars, self-congratulation against the backdrop of a war quite unpopular among the film industry. I've seen the separate thread on the awards season, but what I didn't see addressed was the way Hollywood seemed hell-bent on displaying themselves as radicals, prophets howling in the wilderness, refusing to go quiet into that dark night.

Good Night and Good Luck and Syriana, in particular, seemed thinly veiled allegories for the current Iraq war, and the murky events taking place off the battlefields. Jarhead clearly received a boost in publicity and relevance thanks to the current occupation. But is this handful of voices enough to counter the notion that Iraq and issues related to the situation are, as you pointed out above, notably absent from movie screens?

The reality of preproduction suggests we may just be lagging behind, just as Vietnam was several years into its quagmire before films dealing explicitly (MASH) or implicitly (The Wild Bunch) with criticisms of the war appeared - there are many other examples, of course. But when George Clooney, who I respect and enjoy as both actor and director, accepts his award by giving liberal Hollywood a feel-good foot massage, he not only overlooks blatant hypocrisy (yes, Hattie McDaniel was awarded an Oscar, but she was also told to sit at a back table far from her white co-stars). He overstates the prescient characteristics of a business which, much like Time Magazine, largely follows cautiously behind popular opinion. Arguments rage over whether the American press can be labeled right- or left-wing. Why is Hollywood immune to this? Is the dearth of American films using 9/11, the war on terrorism and the current Iraqi situation evidence of political timidity? Or apathy? Or am I way off?

[Lemmy Caution]

Winterbottom's The Road to Guantanamo is a pretty interesting film about 3 Brits who got caught up in the War on Terror. Sure it's more to do with Afghanistan and the general Terror War than Iraq, but the Iraq War II was supposedly a reposnse to 9-11 and terrorism.
Also, the Road to Guantanamo is based on real events and filmed as a simulated documentary.

But I think the Iraq War II was mostly popular in the wake of the Sept. 11, and has only been questioned in the mainstream press for the past 1 1/2 years. Feature films take many yeears of planning from start to finish, while documentaries can be produced much quicker. Documentaries also have a new-found success these days. And it takes some time and perspective to be able to adequately fictionalize an event.

Flight 93 is due out soon. And Oliver Stone(!) has a film coming out about Sept. 11. So those events which are relatively easy to understand are just coming to film. Iraq will have to wait a few years.

[Fletch F. Fletch]

Film Comment's review of United 93: http://www.filmlinc.com/fcm/mj06/united93.htm

[tavernier]

Came across this op-ed from the LA Times....sounds like he's pining for the glory days of The Green Berets.

Draft Hollywood
The nation needs more gung-ho, patriotic war movies that celebrate our fight against Islamo-fascists.
By Andrew Klavan

May 7, 2006

THERE HAS NEVER been an age without war, not ever. Mass violence is a continual aspect of the human condition. Peace, like good weather, is always local and temporary — and what is peace anyway but the result of past victories in war and the effective threat of future war against would-be aggressors?

We play with our children, read books, go to work and enjoy recreations only because people with guns stand ready, willing and able to kill other people with guns who would kill us if they could.

It's sweet to forget this and therefore difficult to keep it in mind. "It is hard for those who live near a Police Station to believe in the triumph of violence," as T.S. Eliot wrote. That's us — we Americans, protected by a mighty military that by and large obeys the rules of our republic — safe enough, and keeping much of the world safe enough, so that we find it hard to believe in what would happen if that protection failed.

But these fighters do keep us safe. And because keeping us safe is harsh, dangerous work, we should glorify them, exalt them in story and song by way of appreciation.

"United 93" — the film celebrating the heroic civilian attempt to retake a hijacked plane on 9/11 — opened last week. That's great. Well done and about time. But now, let's have some war movies.

We need some films celebrating the war against Islamo-fascism in Afghanistan and Iraq — and in Iran as well, if and when that becomes necessary. We need films like those that were made during World War II, films such as 1943's "Sahara" and "Action in the North Atlantic," or "The Fighting Seabees" and "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo," which were released in 1944.

Not all of these were great films, or even good ones, but their patriotic tributes to our fighting forces inspired the nation.

More than that, they reminded the country what exactly it was that those forces were fighting to defend. Though many of these pictures now seem almost hilariously free with racist tirades against "sauerkrauts," and "eyeties" and "Tojo and his bug-eyed monkeys," they were also carefully constructed to display American life at its open-minded and inclusive best.

Every roll call of Hollywood's U.S. troops seems to include a Ragazzi and a Donovan, a Hellenopolis, a Novasky, and a wisecracking Roth. "Sahara" even throws in the black "Mohammedan" Tabul, a Sudanese ally. This may have been corny, but it was also more or less realistic, and it depicted the war as a conflict between our lovably mongrel melting pot and the despicable Axis ideal of racial purity.

For all their epithets and stereotypes, then, these pictures sent the distinctly American message that it's not bloodlines but national creeds that make a people, and that while even so great a creed as ours can't guarantee the decency of individuals, evil creeds surely sweep them up into destructive madness and therefore must be opposed.

Today we face an enemy in the grip of a belief system just as evil, just as destructive in its intent, as the system we fought back then. We were attacked at home in this war as we were in World War II. The outcome of the struggle is just as much in doubt. Worse, because Islamic fundamentalism supersedes nationhood, the danger it poses is more protean and diffuse. It's easier to pretend it isn't there, more tempting for the war-weary and the fatally foolish to waver and sound retreat.

In short, we need war movies now even more than in the '40s. So why aren't we getting them? One reason surely is that, in the years since World War II, our self-assurance as a nation, the self-assurance necessary for the waging of war, has been shaken, and Hollywood reflects that. The change occurred against the backdrop of postwar history, but I believe it has as much to do with our cultural values, their uses and misuses, as it does with events. The Western ethos, with its Christian roots, demands that we look to our own sins before judging the sins of others. It's amazing how quickly, after the war ended, Hollywood began to examine the ways in which Americans shared the moral failings of the Axis.

As early as 1947, we had "Crossfire," about an American GI who commits an anti-Semitic murder. In 1949, "Home of the Brave" depicted a heroic African American soldier dealing with prejudice. And by 1955, there was the classic "Bad Day at Black Rock," in which a veteran uncovers homicidal anti-Japanese bigotry when he tries to deliver a medal to the father of a Japanese American killed on the battlefields of Italy.

Such self-examination and reform are part of the measure of our greatness. But there's a difference between a humble nation confessing its sins and a country of flagellants whipping themselves for every impure thought. Since the '60s, we have had, it seems, an endless string of war movies, from "Dr. Strangelove" to "Syriana," in which the United States is depicted as wildly aggressive and endlessly corrupt — which, in fact, it's not; which, in fact, it never has been.

In taking our self-examining ethos to these extremes, we have lost a kind of wisdom, wisdom that acknowledges the complexity of human life but can move through it to find the simple truth again. While assessing the intricate failings of our moral history, many of us have lost sight of the simple truth that the system that shapes us is, in fact, a great one, that it has moved us inexorably to do better and that it's well worth defending against every aggressor and certainly against as shabby and vicious an aggressor as we face today.

Not only have we lost this kind of wisdom, but I think that a handful of elites — really only a handful of academics, journalists and artists — has raised up a golden counterfeit in its stead. With this counterfeit wisdom, they imagine themselves above the need for patriotism; they fantasize they grasp a truth beyond good and evil, and they preen themselves on a higher calling than the protection of our way of life. And all the while they forget that they imagine and fantasize and preen only by the grace of those who fight and die and stand guard to secure those freedoms that our system alone guarantees.

When war comes, as it always will, and when it is justified, as it is now, some nuances and shades of gray have to be set aside. It is time, instead, for faith and for ferocity. Our enemies have these weapons, after all. Our movies should inspire us to have them too.