This week’s EW has Carrie Underwood on the cover. As long as there’s not a sound chip inside the magazine singing “Jesus, Take The Wheel” I’ve no opinion on that article.
I do, however, take issue with their lead movie review for Rendition. In doing so I’m going to sing a song I’ve sung before, but I guess it bears repeating.
Here are the choice bits of Owen Gleiberman’s thought process:
Moviegoers, in case you haven’t noticed, are in the midst of a siege of films about the war in Iraq and the politics of the post-9/11 world (at this point, the two are inseparable). So far, though, it isn’t at all clear that moviegoers are interested.
…
The dispiriting cold truth is that the post-9/11 films we’ve seen so far have struggled, in any real sense, to enter the national bloodstream, the collective conversation.…
Yet it’s worth asking if American moviegoers, even as they’ve grown disillusioned with the war, now want to numb that disillusion instead of exploring it. These films are coming out now because they’re at least trying to make sense of a world gone awry, and to fill in the gaps left open by the news media. The time is right — or, at least, as right as it may ever be. Better too soon than too late.
Now, clearly Gleiberman moves in a world different from mine. He’s part of that world where movies are all-encompassing. They are not only entertainment but literature, social commentary and philosophy. Hey, that’s cool. Too each his own and all that. However, what OG and the other Film Geeks seem to repeatedly fail to understand is that for most of us the movies are a form of escapism. War movies that constantly question The Rightness Of It All are not escapist. Who wants to spend $8.50 and their precious Friday night to be lectured at by the First Church Of Celluloid?
But it goes beyond that.
The War On Terror and its various theatres–Iraq, Afghanistan, the airport–are something from which we are all weary. If you support the war you’ve got folks yelling at you and calling you stupid. If you are against the war you’ve got folks yelling and you and telling you you’re a traitor who should be executed. Most people on either side of the topic are pretty gun-shy by now, I think. I see it all the time. Every day I get emails about MCB from readers and lurkers who want us to not talk about the war because they’re tired of it. If some poor person is tired of the war on the Internet for free, what makes Hollywood think that person would actually hire a sitter and pay admission to think about the war some more?
And that’s the big thing that EW is missing. Gleibeman waxes nostalgic for the Vietnam war movies of yesteryear, fondly remembering how everyone flocked to the theatre for Coming Home.* Well, I was alive in the 70s. There was usually only one or two movies playing in town and the TV only had four channels–two of which had iffy reception. Of course people went to those Vietnam movies. It was either that or have sex–and have you seen how hairy and patchouli-scented most people were back then? You worked all day and maybe saw Coming Home on the weekend and discussed it with your friends afterward at Atz.
Life is different now. The Internet keeps conversation about the WoT and its various nuances going constantly. If you want to ponder anything all you have to do is hop online. Unlike 197x, it’s possible for me to discuss The War at literally any hour of the day or night. Most people who want to discuss things, too, want to discuss them. I realise that sounds banal, but think about it. If you go to one of these movies you’re stuck with swallowing the director’s view and then MAYBE hashing it out with a companion or two on the ride home. But if you really want to go all hogwild and get chatty there’s now the internet. It provides better gratification because it’s participatory. Try as they might, movies are a passive medium. (Rocky Horror being the exception which proves that little rule.)
[As an aside allow me to point out that movies like Star Wars, Jaws and Raiders were popular because they represented a return to “fun” movies and an antidote to the Coming Homes and Parallax Views of the world. There’s a reason George Lucas made 8 buttloads of money off Star Wars and has to bribe people to watch THX-1138]
Just Another Pretty Farce 
Um, the war was over when Coming Home came out. Had been over for years, so far as U.S. troops were concerned. Was over before the movie was even a gleam in some scriptwriter’s eye. How can anyone reasonably compare people’s reactions to it with their reactions to movies about Iraq when we’re still in the middle of that war? What one ought to compare the current Iraq movies to is M*A*S*H, which, despite being set in Korea was completely understood to be ‘about’ Vietnam, while the war was still going on. Now, that was a hit, a popular and critical success. Of course, it was a work of f*cking genius, and launched several careers. If anyone puts out a movie that brilliant about Iraq any time in the next couple of years, it’ll probably be a success, too. Because, damn it, anyone who really loves the movies, or any other form of popular culture, knows that there is no inherent contradiction between entertaining people and making them think.
What about Idiocracy and The Fifth Element? Commentary and fun is fun and commentary. (Granted, the Fifth Element is more fun, but it’s one of the first examples to come to mind on an all-too-short lunch break.)
My Iraq war movie is set during the first Gulf War.
nm is right. The golden age of Vietnam War Films started well after the last chopper left Saigon.
Ten years from now I hope that we see some Good films about Iraq, but some how I doubt it will happen.
M*A*S*H is a great comparison, and what makes it different from all these current war movies is that, while it dealt with a serious subject, it didn’t take itself too seriously. Joe Moviegoer is not going to want to see any movie that presents itself as “My Thoughts On the War, Let Me Show You Them.” If a clever writer can find a way *around* the topic and (for lack of a better word) trick an audience into thinking about things, that’s when people will show up in droves.
Because yeah, if people want to talk about the war they can go online. And if they want to *hear* about the war, they can just turn on their television set. You can find something on about the war 24 hours a day. That wasn’t true for the Vietnam-era culture.
During Vietnam, it was just on when we sat down as a family to eat dinner.
Now, see, Joe Moviegoer turned up in droves to see a bunch of very serious movies about Vietnam. But not until some years after the war was over.
Actually the source of the writer arguement is flawed as these movies weren’t “fun” as an objective…they were all-age friendly (violence and sex considerations) Blockbusters. Eliminating violence from a war movie makes it no longer a war movie.
And THX-1138 isn’t unpopular because of politics, its just boring as hell because he made in the sewer of an airport with no budget.
Syriana was actually a good political movie that did well, but the ‘political’ movie is its own genre for grown ups there are plenty of “fun” age-friendly movies to see.