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| /Variety |
American Sniper wants to sell conscientious jingoism. It’s attempting to appeal to both
camps of viewers, people passionate about military intervention in the Middle
East and people critical of over-zealous American foreign policy. Chris Kyle is
a fervent patriot, but leaves the war damaged and wounded. He dedicated his
life afterwards to assisting wounded veterans, and was killed by one on a
hunting trip. He’s considered an American hero by many.
American Sniper has stirred a lot of controversy. As a
result of our country’s conflation of support-our-troops-patriotism and
conservatism, many have spoken out and called Eastwood’s Sniper pro-right propaganda.
Seth Rogen and Michael Moore have slammed it; on the other side, Joe Biden reportedly was in tears by the
end of the film. The ambiguous morality of Sniper
reveals how much of a politician director Clint Eastwood needed to be to
make this movie; in an industry dominated by liberals and a target audience
comprising of conservatives, Eastwood found himself having to balance both perspectives.
A fine line
exists for war movies. Kathryn Bigelow – the master of the contemporary war picture – gave
us Zero Dark Thirty and The Hurt Locker, two pieces which successfully
balanced the costs of war with the pragmatism of the battlefield. But prominent liberal Bill
Maher – the popular host of HBO’s Real Time – denounced Zero Dark Thirty for endorsing torture. Maher
found himself ironically, on January 16, with Bigelow on his
panel, discussing the glorification of the sniper in American Sniper: “I had some issues with it… this rah, rah, shit…”
As a fan of Maher’s show (sometimes), I found his commentary on this issue
incredibly inconsistent. Does that mean every war movie that depicts, without
judgment, issues with which we are uncomfortable an immediate glorification? Isn’t the
point of art to deal with what we find most upsetting, to give us that
cathartic space to explore the moral ambiguities of the battlefield?
On the other hand, people find themselves obliged to defend this movie by any
means necessary. This is disturbing as well. I
am troubled by the casual force imposed upon these Iraqi citizens in Eastwood’s
film. I am disgusted by its conflation of the enemies that came out of 9/11 and caused our invasion of Iraq. The film’s adoration of gun culture left me a little unsettled.
Despite all
this, let’s get real: this is not one of Eastwood's better films. He does
not handle his subject well, reveling in unsubstantiated ambiguity. It does feel
political to some extent. Eastwood emotionally strangleholds you, forces you to
have sympathy for his subject rather than exploring him.
David sums up my thoughts on American Sniper succinctly,
even if I'm a little more negative on it. It is not well-observed, but sloppily structured: the fighting scenes feel like a video-game, and the whole thing amounts to something overwhelmingly bland. Honestly, I don’t really care about
Chris Kyle. If he’s a good person or a bad person, I truly don’t care; the film didn't do nearly enough in that regard.
Not because of
my politics. In spite of my politics. I shouldn’t be watching a movie about the
Iraq War, an issue loaded with politics and controversy and meaning, and feel
like I’m watching a movie made in 2004. Yet I did, and it happens to be more
popular than ever. American Sniper broke
box office records by earning $105 million in its first weekend opening. It got
nominations in Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Adapted Screenplay. Jane Fonda
was touched by the film, according to her Twitter account.
I can’t get
behind a film – or defend it in any capacity – when an obligation exists to honor
it. This is fascism. When people look at art as resource to justify their
narrow perspectives on life and war, that doesn’t upset me. It’s when a
seasoned director like Clint Eastwood purports his picture as a litmus test of
patriotism. Depiction is not endorsement, but filmmakers that purposefully
obscure and gloss over morally questionable choices are artists that I find to be incredibly
suspect.
I am clearly not
comparing Eastwood or Republicans, the Iraq War or George Bush, to Nazis; an
equivalence does not exist there. (In any case, this idea applies irrespective
of political leanings). The Nazis looked toward art – morally obtuse, intently
solipsistic works of war art, purposefully apolitical as requested by the Fuher
– to justify their narrow-minded and extraordinarily evil perspectives. Hitler
believed art was separate from politics, and art served to portray the ideal
world, the world as posited by Nazi philosophy.
American Sniper is not skittish. Its supposed
conscientious jingoism sells a worldview, makes vague what many of us are
forced to contend with. How did our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan damage
these communities? How does our intensely-patriotic culture fuel hatred and
breed malice in the Middle East, a place we are purportedly supposed to be
helping?
That American Sniper is getting this amount of attention shocks me, mainly because of how little
it says. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty functioned as
thought-provoking meditations on country and man, the mental and physical costs
of war and obsession. They have original and thought-provoking
perspectives, irrespective of who specifically is watching and what their
political/military connections are. American
Sniper invites you into its grey area, ignores an incredibly
disturbing story and forces you to accept its moral preoccupations as
patriotism. Give me something more, Clint: with American Sniper as is, this is something I cannot do.