Monday, April 21, 2008

A Walk in the Valley of Elah


Paul Haggis' In the Valley of Elah is well-crafted, thought provoking, topical, and engaging. It isn't perfect, but any film which endeavors and mostly succeeds to show both a human drama against the large disturbing canvas of the American scene in the Iraq war era deserves at least as much attention as any of the five Best Picture nominees this year,.

Tommy Lee Jones is given something to do besides waxing poetic and serving as the tweener for others who were seeking after Javier Bardem's evil with an air compressor as he did in No Country for Old Men. Here he is seeking answers to his son who has gone AWOL since returning from Iraq. Here he is Hank Deerfield , a former military policeman at the very base his son is stationed at,; his faith, his patriotism and his stability all get tested. He spars and later links up with a detective and single mom played by Charlize Theron, leads over his wife as one would expect a career army man to do, and tries to make sense of technically corrupted phone videos taken by his son in Iraq.


One of the things I like about this film is that the filmmaker seems very concerned about the details and the richness of the experience. Tommy Lee's character experiences aspects of the base and town, small details and episodes. Such as when he meets up with a former colleague at the base for breakfast played by character actor Barry Corbin. It doesn't move the plot in a linear fashion, but it does add some backstory details and makes him just a little bit more isolated. Additionally, is a very elaborate sequence where he goes to a strip club. It must have cost thousands. The points that are made in the scene are minor ones as far as plot is concerned, But when Jones shows the bartender hi son's picture in a room full of rowdy military and naked strippers and tells him he is looking for his boy, one gets a sense of the kind of needle in a haystack search for truth he has in front of him.

I am very careful in discussing matters of plot in a film that takes its time to reveal and is filled with layers of details. Elah is among the at least half dozen releases with an Iraq or post 9/11 related topic that have come out within the last couple years and have not found an audience. What makes this more ironic in this case is that a major theme is how our society is isolated from the war and can not relate with the men who return from it. This is underscored in the extras on the DVD which feature a strong content-related series of short documentaries that are there for extensible reference on the film experienced, not just to hype he project, as is too often the case. The deleted sequence is also worth one's time.

DVDs can give films of merit like this one a second chance at an audience. It is one of the aspects of that medium, that acts as a service to filmmakers who are serious and don't always have stars lined up for commercial success for some reasons or other. Maybe the somewhat religious allusion for a title made a difference or perhaps the masses are not quite ready for hard and sober filmmaking about this thing that is so full of paradox and feels like it will never end.
posted by well-executed buffet at 8:07 PM
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