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There's something happening here
What it is ain't exactly clear
There's a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware
I think it's time we stop, children, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down

What a field-day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Singing songs and carrying signs
Mostly say, hooray for our side
I think it's time we stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down

Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you're always afraid
You step out of line, the man come and take you away
I think it's time we stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down

............ from For What It's Worth by Stephen Stills, 1966

*******

When battles can be won by pushing buttons rather than committing troops, does it impart a false sense of security? What happens in the event of a ground action, when lives will be lost? And, in this sanitized environment, do we ever consider the real, human cost on the civilian population of the so-called 'enemy'?

............ James Berardinelli

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Evil Clone: They're going to think that you're anti-American if you keep doing this.

OnM: I'm not anti-American. I'm anti-stupidity.

EC: Well, then you've got a long, probably endless fight ahead of yourself.

OnM: Fortunately, I'm pretty stupid myself. I find that really helps.

EC: You don't say!

*******

One and 3/7ths weeks to go, dear flickophiles, before we return to the neverending story of The Proto-Goddess Buffy Summers and her morally ambiguous adventures within Sunnydale spacetime. In the cooling period between summer's end and the soon-to-be embarked upon Season 7, as I remarked upon last week, I get to get down with a bit of politically/socially intense cinema, because-- well, because why the hell not.

September 11th 2002 has come and gone, and fortunately there were no further serious terroristic actions directed at my home country, for which I, as do nearly all Americans, breathe a sigh of relief. But is this just the quiet before the formatting of further political vengeance? Is President George just salaciously sabre-rattling in hopes of finally getting the United Nations to get off it's collective pompous posteriors and format some effective means of getting madass Hussein out of power and then promoting a serious route to real reforms in Iraq? Or is he going to attempt to achieve what his father so ingloriously failed to back during the last U.S.-led gulf war? And if so, will it turn out just as badly, or will we somehow haphazardly succeed?

I would say something along the lines of 'God, I hope so!', but first of all, I try not to lean on God too much. Even if I'm wrong, and there actually is a benign supernatural creator out there somewhere, I still think that this is really our problem to solve. I'm still of a mind to criticize Giles for leaving Buffy in the midst of her depression and returning to England in the fall of last year's BtVS season, but on the other hand if he had stayed, would she have come to value the experience of the next few months in the same way as she apparently has at their conclusion? Giles had faith in his 'daughter' that she would survive her trials, and emerge stronger for them. I don't know whether or not he knew of the words spoken to Buffy by the spirit guide, the ones about the 'Slayer forging strength from pain', but it appears that he felt a similar motivation. Just as Buffy begins the process of recognizing that 'she will be powerful' in regards to her sister Dawn's future capacities, Giles pushes aside his fears and trusts in his charge to win her own battles, even when they seem impossibly difficult.

But Buffy has one central resource that always aids her in her eventual victories-- a moral center, and the growing appreciation that adhering to the dictates of that center entails sacrifice, and sometimes a challenging of the 'obvious solution'. Buffy may be a warrior, but she is a warrior for the cause of justice. When she fails in this goal, she doesn't give up, but learns from her mistakes and tries not to repeat them. What more can you ask?

One thing that I try to ask of people is that they not wave their flag in my face and demand that I 'stand up and be a patriot'. It has been my observation over the course of my life since the mid-1960's that the folks who so effusively display their 'love of country' don't always look past the floorboards of their patriotism and understand that to be 'righteous' demands an ethical foundation that rests on solid ground. Back during the height of the Vietnam War, folk musician/activist Pete Seeger often performed a tune called 'Waist Deep in the Big Muddy', a ballad highly critical of the moral foundations of the war. Once, when he performed it on a weekly variety show, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, the brothers Smothers were succinctly informed by the network honchos that the show was going to be canceled if such 'unpatriotic' displays were to continue. The Brothers continued. The show was canceled. The war itself wound bloodily on, with tens of thousands of casualties collectively on all sides, until the general American public began to see that Seeger and his political contemporaries had more than some validity to their viewpoint. Looking back, I have to ask the same question that so many others have, which is why did it take so long?

The last Gulf War was very different from the war in Vietnam, and yet it had the same central, and equally disturbing issue to consider-- Why are we doing this? What do we hope to achieve? The answers seem obvious at first, but then fluidly drift into ambiguity, like gravity pulling the rain out of the sky, heedless of whether the final result is food or flood. After the passage of time, we only know where we are, and not how we got there. The solid terrain has not only changed form, but seems to be endlessly receding. We're soon waist deep in the big muddy, and if there is a fool at the helm, you can be sure as shootin' that the orders will be to 'push on'.

When the leadership fails, there is nothing left to do but to call on oneself to 'do the right thing'. Of course, you could be wrong in what you feel to be the 'right thing', but if you are a person who strongly feels that compassion isn't a sign of weakness, and you have the further strength to stand up to the people who do, then there is a chance that the end, if not optimal, will at least be better.

We may not be angels, but neither do we need to always bear the burden of stone wings. Someone who seems to appreciate this difficult aspect of human nature is the director of this week's Classic Movie, Three Kings, David O. Russell. Russell has carefully crafted a rare film that isn't afraid to challenge the notion of what traditional 'patriotic honor' should mean to the American public, or for that matter any other country that places it's own economic or political interests above simple humanitarian concerns. Three Kings tells the story of several Gulf War soldiers who initially engage in a morally ambiguous adventure, only to discover that they identify too much with 'the enemy' to continue casually degrading and destroying them.

The beginning of the film takes place at the end of the 1991 Gulf War, or 'Operation Desert Storm' as it was conventionally known in the U.S. A cease-fire has just been negotiated with Iraq, whose invasion of Kuwait has been thwarted by a largely American-led coalition of international military forces. Many of the soldiers who were sent overseas never actually got to engage in any fighting, and the presence of international media has made the military very conscious of how things appear to the viewers back home, watching events unfold on their TV sets.

As Three Kings begins, the first words out of a character's mouth-- Are we shooting?-- largely foreshadow the satiric nature of the movie. Wanting to know whether or not it is still OK to shoot at people, a coalition soldier accidentally shoots the head off of an Arab soldier who is waving a white flag to surrender, but who hasn't apparently gotten one of the leaflets that visually instruct him to also put his weapon down. Shortly after this, we see U.S. troops supervising the surrender of a huge number of bedraggled-looking Iraqi soldiers, methodically strip-searching them to check for weapons or contraband. One of the soldiers who resists the search turns out to be, well, 'holding' a map showing the location of some stolen Kuwaiti gold bullion hidden in a bunker in some small, remote Iraqi town.

Thus we meet three of the four soldiers who are to carry the main story line. Sgt. Troy Barlow (Mark Wahlberg), Chief Elgin (Ice Cube) and Pvt. Conrad Vig (Spike Jonze), who now possess the map, enlist the aid of a Special Forces veteran, one Sgt. Maj. Archie Gates (George Clooney), who quickly decides to lead them on an unauthorized mission to steal the treasure. Doing so involves ditching the cable TV news reporter that Gates been officially assigned to escort (possibly as punishment for Gates' less than zealous support of what he sees as a misguided military effort). Her name is Adriana Cruz (Nora Dunn), in a role somewhat reminiscent of Christiane Amanpour, but driven by a journalistic zeal so intense that she is largely uncaring of her own safety, or anything else but getting 'the story'. Highly suspicious of Sgt. Gates' sudden and unexplained disappearance, Cruz sets out on a mission of her own to track him down, and find out what 'the story' really is.

Sgt. Gates tells his companions that we 'can get in and out, without firing a shot'. He counts on the Iraqis being more interested in rounding up the 'rebels' who are steadily rising up to oust Saddam Hussein from power (at the encouragement of the U.S. government, which then abandoned them to their fate), which indeed seems to be the case. The gold is found, and the Iraqi troops that show up in mid-heist mostly stand around and wait for the Americans to leave, after which, of course, they intend to slaughter the locals.

Sgt. Gates hesitates, debating whether to stick with the original plan or try to somehow protect the townspeople, apparently trying to deceive himself that 'it isn't our concern'. Then, reality suddenly and violently intrudes, and the movie begins to shift ethical gears as one by one the four men begin to realize that the gold means little compared to the lives of these 'sand niggers' and 'towelheads', who now appear terribly human and desperately vulnerable.

George Clooney, who most viewers still tend to associate with his several-years-long role on ER, really shows a gift for realizing the character of Sgt. Gates. He walks the fine edge necessary to convince us that Archie can rationalize the opportunity to get rich without there being any 'consequences' of the act, but when he finds himself getting 'waist deep', he doesn't just 'push on'-- he turns around, and seeks a better way to return to shore. Archie is intelligent, decisive when he needs to be, and has a moral center, and Clooney's performance really sells this to us.

Each of the other men has their own epiphany in this matter, one of the many unconventional twists Russell brings to Three Kings. Normally, you might expect Clooney's character to 'lead' them into 'greater awareness', but instead each man eventually comes to the same conclusion by themselves, and each in their own way.

Also, nearly all Hollywood movies ferociously stereotype the Arab characters who appear in them. Three Kings surprises us by depicting the way that culturally, the world is 'shrinking' and how different societies are slowly blending together and sharing common values. For example, when Archie and his men meet the surviving spouse and children of a rebel who was brutally killed by Saddam's soldiers, the conventional handling of the scene would likely depict the survivors as your basic third-world simpletons, duly grateful to the 'brave Americans' for saving them. But this doesn't happen-- instead, "I'm a business school graduate from Bowling Green," Archie and his men are told. "Your planes blew up all my cafes."

Other 'small world' themes abound. Dunn's character, the TV journalist, stands (irrationally) calmly in the middle of tremendous potential danger, her presence accepted unquestionably by both sides in the conflict because they think it's perfectly natural that they should be shown on television. When Sgt. Troy Barlow is captured by the Iraqis and locked in a room, he finds it filled with the loot of war, including a lot of cell phones. What happens next has a now familiar, and just as chilling resonance, when he tries to call his wife in America to give her the coordinates of his position and get the army to send help. Realizing that he is very likely minutes or hours from certain death, he ends up breaking down emotionally as he tries to tell her how much he loves her and their child. How this subplot eventually plays out is, again, startling in its unconventionality and in the way it treats the Arabs involved.

This is David Russell's third picture, after Spanking the Monkey in 1994 and Flirting With Disaster in 1996. For me, it conjured up many similarities in overall tone to films like Robert Altman's M*A*S*H (for the satiric and humorous elements) and Peter Weir's The Year of Living Dangerously (for the pathos) or even to Mike Nichols' Catch-22, although the ending of '22', if fading memory serves correctly, is far more bleak than the one in Three Kings. A few critics have commented on whether Kings' ending was 'tacked on' to make the studio heads happier, and in fact Russell himself ponders whether he could have done it differently on the DVD commentary track, but I found it satisfying and not out of keeping with the obvious intent of the filmmakers.

Russell's film isn't afraid to ask the difficult and often actively sidelined questions about the numerous military actions the United States has involved itself with during the second half of the 20th Century and now is continuing into the beginnings of the 21st. If an excessive obsession with 'uber-patriotism' is in danger of evolving into a national 'drug' epidemic, then clear-headed cinematic voices like Russell's are a source of some much needed rehab.

E. Pluribus Cinema, Unum,

OnM

*******

Technically it depends just whose side you're on:

Three Kings is available on DVD, which was also the format of the review copy. The film was released in 1999 and the running time is 1 hour and 54 minutes. The original theatrical aspect ratio is 2.35:1 which is preserved on the DVD. (The director and his cinematographer continuously utilize the entire frame, so please try to see this film in the original widescreen format-- it's going to be a completely different film visually if you don't). The screenplay was written by the director, David O. Russell, based on an original story by John Ridley. The DVD version contains numerous extras, including a very informative commentary track by the director.

The film was produced by Charles Roven and Paul Junger Witt, with additional production assistance by Bruce Berman, Alan Glazer, Gregory Goodman, Edward McDonnell, John Ridley, Kim Roth, Douglas Segal and Kelley Smith-Wait. Cinematography was by Newton Thomas Sigel with film editing by Robert K. Lambert. Production design was by Catherine Hardwicke with art direction by Jann K. Engel, set decoration by Gene Serdena and costume design by Kym Barrett. Original music was by Carter Burwell. Non-original music was by Bono, Thomas Newman and a number of others. The original theatrical sound mix was in the standard digital formats, namely DTS, Dolby Digital and SDDS.

Cast overview:

George Clooney .... Major Archie Gates
Mark Wahlberg .... Sergeant First Class Troy Barlow
Ice Cube .... Staff Sergeant Chief Elgin
Spike Jonze .... Private First Class Conrad Vig
Cliff Curtis .... Amir Abdullah
Nora Dunn .... Adriana Cruz
Jamie Kennedy .... Private Walter Wogaman
Saïd Taghmaoui .... Captain Said
Mykelti Williamson .... Colonel Horn
Holt McCallany .... Captain Van Meter
Judy Greer .... Cathy Daitch
Christopher Lohr .... Teebaux
Jon Sklaroff .... Paco
Liz Stauber .... Debbie Barlow (Troy's Wife)
Marsha Horan .... Amir's wife

*******

Miscellaneous:

From an Interview with Stanley Hauerwas by Scott McLemee: (see link below for full article)

Q: The issue includes some stunning images from New York, showing the immediate aftermath of the attacks.

A: That's the work of James Nachtwey. He calls himself an "after-war photographer." He did a book called INFERNO, with pictures he took in Rwanda, Romania, Somalia, Vietnam. I said, "Jim, how can you look at this much suffering and not want to kill somebody?" I mean, I'd want to kill somebody. But he doesn't. When Time magazine came out after 9-11, I saw that his photographs were in it, so I called him up. He lives two blocks away [from the WTC]. He'd heard it and ran out with his camera and started taking photographs. They're haunting. We wanted those images there to show that we're not unaware that people died, that this is a wound, and you've got to talk about the wound.

Q: Haven't the media done quite a bit of that, by now?

A: The current heroization of the people who died is the unwillingness of Americans to accept the idea that Americans can die as victims.

Q: Is that really a fair characterization of how the dead have been treated? Most of those killed really were victims -- people who happened to be at their offices at a fatal moment. What the media and the public have regarded as heroic are the people who lost their lives while trying to save others.

A: I honor that, of course. Anyone would be stupid who didn't honor that. But to turn these deaths into martyrdom is something done for war-policy reasons, to fuel the desire for revenge. They've made people's deaths mean more than their lives ever could have. I don't like that at all.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week601/hauerwas.html

For a link to the collection of essays being discussed, go to:

http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/911site/saq.html

*******

The Question of the Week:

Is patriotism a drug?

Post 'em if you've got 'em, dear friends, and I'll be back next week (or possibly someone else will) to entertain/annoy ya'all with one more filmic go at the nature of 'ambiguous conflict' before we return to matters more traditionally Buffyverse-ish. Until then, take care, and fight the power that be, just do it carefully, OK?

Peace.

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Classic Movie of the Week - September 14th 2002 - Three Kings