Jarhead Review
by samseescinema (sammeriam AT comcast DOT net)November 13th, 2005
Jarhead
Reviewed by Sam Osborn of www.samseescinema.com
Rating: 3.5 out of 4
Director: Sam Mendes
Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgaard, Jamie Foxx, Chris Cooper Screenplay: Boyles
"Like most good and great marines, I hated the Corps. I hated being a marine because more than all of the things in the world I wanted to be-smart, famous, sexy, oversexed, drunk, fucked, high, alone, famous, smart, known, understood, loved, forgiven, oversexed, drunk, high, smart, sexy-more than all of those things, I was a marine. A jarhead. A grunt."
And so goes Anthony Swofford's biting memoir on his time in the first Gulf War as part of the Target Acquisition/Scout-Sniper platoon. I read the novel earlier this year at the Telluride Film Festival and found myself tucking the book into my back pocket, just in case I were to have any snatchets of downtime between screenings. The book hooked me from page 1 to the final page on 258. It was a relevant and important novel on the realities of soldier-hood in a widely undocumented area of the Gulf War. Where the air raids drew all the press, Anthony Swofford and the STA platoon were standing around aiming their rifles at sand. The book was a candid, introspective, almost Hemingway-esque account of life as a Marine. It took no political stance but those formed from the high and low torrents of feeling within the camp and gave readers the beautifully complex and simplistic portrait of war.
And now comes the film adaptation. The book is admittedly better, offering a richer internal narration and a greater sense of the oblivion Swofford found himself in as he got tugged further and further into the war in Iraq. But the film is a fine one--Oscar-worthy even. It is a Sam Mendes film after all (director of American Beauty and Road to Perdition). And if I hadn't read the book earlier, I would certainly list it as the one the best this year. What I'm really trying to say is that by reading the novel, I critique the film with a bias not usually associated with my reviews. Anyone who's read a book before seeing its film counterpart knows that the preceding reading shifts the essence of the film viewing.
The film opens much like Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket-a comparison that will be widely made-with a tall, white, mustached drill sergeant barking out insults and punishments. Our lead, Anthony Swofford (Jake Gyllenhaal), stands still, shaven into a jarhead-their head's are shaved to look like jars-pale, and scared, taking a beating from the sergeant. But soon he's charged to join the STA group under staff sergeant Siek (Jamie Foxx), competing to be chosen as one of the eight scout/snipers for the platoon. He's awarded a position as shooter, with Troy (Peter Sarsgaard) as his spotter. The platoon is then sent off to war; to Operation Desert Shield as part of the Marine spearhead. But as they arrive, boarding from the plane into 100 degree heat with a meaty mix of testosterone and adrenaline pumping through their veins, they realize waiting will be their main tactic. Waiting to fight, and waiting to expend their pent up rage bred from the Corps.
As veterans of the novel can tell, the film is much more linear than the book. Instead of jumping about different parts of the war, sometimes venturing backwards to Swofford's childhood and ahead into the pathetic life he led for a time after the war, the film decides to broaden the accessibility of the story, and allow time for characters to emerge in a linear fashion. This is both a pro and a con for Jarhead. The book was told with emotion and insanity as its foundation, but with the film, the timeline of the war acts as the backbone. We're treated to much less narration and much, much more dialogue. I would have preferred a narration style more like Lord of War's, where dialogue was interspersed sparingly between Nicholas Cage's neurotically logical voiceover. The method would bring back the head games the novel created and pull us further into Swofford's conscious. But that isn't Mendes' style.
Generally, Mendes likes to perfect the straightforward cinematic style. He'll rarely pull any experimental technical tricks, but decide to mold his smoother, even general, style to his film's story, which is where Mendes likes to play hardball. He's tackled suburban pedophiliac indulgence with American Beauty and comic book gangster film noir with Road to Perdition.
Also with his past two films, Mendes was graced by the presence of legendary cinematographer, Conrad L. Hall. Unfortunately, Hall passed away after completing Road to Perdition, forcing Mendes to hire the next best man: Roger Deakins. Deakins has been known to work often with the Coen brothers (O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Intolerable Cruelty) and whose cinematography has been high points for such films as Thirteen Days, Kundun, and The Village. Here with Jarhead, Deakins employs a smooth handheld feel, which generally causes a film to feel more frenetic, candid and realistic. With war films, and especially Jarhead, a handheld style can bring us closer to war and sometimes make us feel its heat. The film has a washed-out color scheme, with shimmering heat waves and an abundance of tiring sand. It was allegedly shot mostly outside of Los Angeles, as many desert war films are (M.A.S.H. was even shot there), but the set works convincingly as the Middle East.
Jake Gyllehaal has quickly made it to the A-list of male actors this year. He's skipped the mish-mash of B roles, finding fame in Indie cult hits like The Good Girl and Donnie Darko, impressing directors enough to hire him for more important parts instead of disappointing secondary work. Along with his impressive performance in Jarhead, he's soon to appear in Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain, the finest film I've seen yet in 2005. Most importantly however, Gyllenhaal's begun filming David Fincher's (we should probably just refer to Fincher as Film God) new True Crime film Zodiac, based on the Zodiac Killer of San Francisco.
Sadly, Jarhead will probably be remembered as the war film without any action, which is a kind of insult towards the film's posterity. It works without the action and shouldn't be criticized for it. It touches upon aspects of war rarely exploited; offering a kind of smorgasbord of pent up testosterone and sand. Jarhead doesn't hustle itself for any political propaganda, the character Troy announcing this early in the film when he spouts "Fuck politics! When you're out here in the desert, none of that matters." And although the film pulls some punches from the book, it's still hard-edged and introspective enough to leave us reeling from its affective portrait of a common modern soldier.
-sam osborn of www.samseescinema.com
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