Movies are a fiction medium. Even those supposedly based on true events, even documentaries. The point of films is to tell a story. And when telling a story based on actual people and events, that necessarily means leaving things out, compressing time, combining characters and inventing totally fictional characters. Because the point of a film is to tell a story. If you want accuracy, go read a book.
I saw this played out (with varying degrees of success) with three movies this week: “The King’s Speech,” “The Social Network” and “Green Zone,” all released last year. The first two are explicitly based on real people and events, and the third a fictionalization of real events.
“The Social Network” is of course “the Facebook movie.” “The King’s Speech” interested me because, aside from the fact that it swept all the awards, I’m reading a book about the pre-World War I relationships between cousins Tsar Nicholas, Kaiser Wilhelm and King George V, so a film about George’s son (like him, a “spare” who ended up on the throne) rounded things out a bit.
One thing that struck me about “The Social Network” was how I kept forgetting that Aaron Sorkin wrote the screenplay and David Fincher directed it. Both Sorkin and Fincher have very noticeable styles that at times have overwhelmed their work. Yes, the film looks like it was shot with all the lights off and sounds as if someone were sitting on the mics the whole time, which is Fincher-y, but it’s not as aggressively Fincher-y as, say, “Se7en.” The only scene that struck me as “Oh, my hell, slow the f- down” Sorkin-y was the opening one.
Technique is sadly not as transparent in “Green Zone,” of which sherpas in Nepal could probably watch 30 seconds and say, “Oh, that’s Paul Greengrass. By the way, do you have any dramamine?” (Dear Hollywood: when I’m doing a crossword puzzle during the half-hour-long climactic chase/shootout because I’ve given up fracking trying to see anything, it’s time to put the shaky-cam on a tripod and set up some lights.)
But that’s not my main beef with “Green Zone.” It’s a well-made thriller (at least for the first half, which I’ll get to in a second), but I feel like it would work better if it were set in a fictional country and war. Because, set in Iraq in the weeks after the U.S. invasion in 2003, frankly, it’s kind of preposterous.
So we have a soldier, Matt Damon, who’s supposed to be securing the WMD left behind, which of course didn’t exist. The first half hour or so is brilliant, with engrossing scenes that really made me feel like I was there in the “fog of war.” There’s one scene where Matt’s convoy is trying to drive through a street crowded with Iraqis begging for water. First he tells some of the men to get out of their Humvee and clear a path; then, as the crowd grows more agitated, you can see the soldiers tense up: are they about to be shot at? Is one of these people going to set off a suicide bomb? Nothing happens, but you (as a viewer) get that heightened awareness that soldiers in combat feel.
There’s more tension in that two minutes than in the rest of the movie. After that the film moves from realism into garden-variety thriller territory.
*here be spoilers*
Chief Matt (his character did have a name, but c’mon, it’s Matt) knows from experience that the WMD intelligence is BS. So when an Iraqi man gives him a tip about a wanted general hiding nearby, he jumps on it, finding a notebook that lists the general’s safe-houses. It turns out that the general is the Pentagon’s confidential source on WMD, only the Pentagon official who handled him (Greg Kinnear) lied to the administration, and media, about what the general had to say (that there really weren’t any WMD). Matt has to find the general and get him to tell the truth (because then the war will end immediately…?), while Greg is using Army Special Forces to stalk the safe-houses and kill the general before he can be brought in from the cold.
The friendly Iraqi kills the general, a move that my 12-year-old nephew who wasn’t even watching the movie saw coming. (True story. Alex called me and said, “Aunt Sara, I was just playing Angry Birds when I had the overwhelming sensation that, somewhere, a character is going to disappear for a large chunk of time and then conveniently reappear when it’s time to shoot the bad-guy-who’s-secretly-a-good-guy.” And I said, “It’s okay, honey, Aunt Sara’s just watching a bad movie.) (That is not a true story.)
Here’s where the preposterousness comes in. If you accept that an Army officer serving in a war zone during active combat operations somehow has the free time to investigate the Pentagon’s WMD source (which I don’t); if you accept that the Army officer can find evidence of a wanted Baathist and not turn it over to his superiors and then face absolutely no consequences (which I don’t): in what universe does an Army officer e-mail confidential information to every news outlet on the planet (as Matt does at the end) and not get hauled off in handcuffs?
*end spoilers*
Personally, I think the story of how we got into the Iraq War needs to be told. I think we need to record and tell and tell again how bad intelligence and wishful thinking did such a disservice to the most professional military in the world by using them as political props. And that’s what bugged me about “Green Zone.” It’s not a movie, it’s an op-ed in search of a plot. And it’s cowardly because it couches valid criticism as a half-ass fictionalization. Frankly, pinning the real-life shenanigans that led us into that war on a fictional Pentagon official is a cop-out. If you want to tell this story, then tell this story.
And don’t turn a New York Times reporter into a Wall Street Journal reporter (with a fake URL: “twsj.com”… what was up with that, anyway?). Was that supposed to make it easier on anti-war audiences? Because the actual reporter who basically printed the Bush Administration’s talking points verbatim worked for none other than the alleged house organ of the left.
It’s odd that I hold films presented as a true story to a lesser standard than one that’s ostensibly fiction, but that’s based on real events. I suppose that I just assumed that “The Social Network” or “The King’s Speech” would do all of those things I mentioned in the first paragraph – compress events, omit those that don’t advance the narrative, etc.
Someone once told me that a fantasy or sci-fi story had to work even harder at creating verisimilitude because they are set in unreal environments. “Green Zone” failed on that point for me. If the filmmakers had picked a direction – either totally fictional or totally true to life – I think this could’ve been an excellent, and important, film.
No comments:
Post a Comment