When In The Valley Of Elah came out last fall, a lot of movie critics went on about how they couldn't figure out the title. I always thought, judging by the commercials, that it was a place in Iraq, but that's not it at all. Now that I've finally seen the movie on DVD, I can tell you that the meaning of the title is very clear, to me at least. It just requires some thought. Not much thought either, but some. That's the problem I think a lot of people have with the movie, It requires some thought.
Elah stars Tommy Lee Jones as Hank Deerfield, a Vietnam veteran who is tortured by the news of his son's disappearance and, eventually, brutal murder shortly after he returned from a tour in Iraq. When the movie didn't do well, many people assumed that its anti-war overtones tanked it at the box office. While that was part of it, the truth is this is a depressing story that does not give its lead character, or the audience, easy answers to the questions about why his son died. A movie like that simply isn't going to pull in the box office take that Transformers does, especially not in this day and age where many people don't feel like being depressed at the movies and will simply wait for the DVD instead. I didn't see it till yesterday on DVD but not because I didn't want to but, rather, because I live in a small town whose local multiplex only has 7 screens. In a case like that, movies like Valley Of Elah will be ignored in order to keep Saw IV and Witless Protection in theaters for another week. This is another reason why the movie didn't do well.
Hank Deerfield was a criminal investigator while in the Army and uses those skills to investigate his son's death. This brings him into contact with the only person who truly sympathizes with him, Police Detective Emily Sanders (Charlize Theron, looking pretty but not glamorous). She comes to share Hank's passion for solving his son's murder as well as his disgust at the incompetence of the local authorities who did a poor job of initially examining the crime scene and also jumped at the chance to hand the whole investigation off to the military who may be trying to cover up something. At the very least, the military is eager to wrap up the whole unpleasant situation.
Hank enters this investigation with certain assumptions and has to watch helplessly as one assumption after another collapses under the weight of the evidence that he uncovers. The most painful thing for him is how his son, Mike, changed during his time in Iraq. One of the movie's points is that immorality is like an infectious disease, that Nietzsche's warning about not battling with monsters lest you become a monster can be all too true. He also discovers that he's wrong about the ways in which combat veterans would treat their fellow soldiers. Jones does an excellent job of portraying Hank Deerfield as a man whose strength of character gives him the ability to function through the depression that grows with each new piece of information he uncovers. It's a piece of acting that stands out in his illustrious career as he plays a man who manages to let the audience know what he's thinking and feeling even as he tries to repress his emotions.
As I said, there are answers given to the questions asked during the movie, but they are not easily given nor understood. All the data and evidence are presented to you but no Sherlock Holmes type comes out at the end to connect all the dots and explain why so much of what took place happened or why some of the characters did what they did. The characters try to explain but they are unable to fully reveal their motives because even they don't fully understand them. You have to think about all this. You have to use your brain and so many of the people who make movies like Pirates of the Caribbean one of the all time box office champs have no interest in studying the ending and trying to figure out the relevance of a child's simplistic questions or what it means when the contents of a mysterious package that Mike Deerfield sent to his family before he died are revealed. Again, the answers are not simple but they do say something important about human nature and how that impacts this country and the war in Iraq.
No comments:
Post a Comment