IN THE VALLEY OF ELAH
Director: Paul Haggis Stars: Tommy Lee Jones, Charlize Theron, Susan Sarandon, Josh Brolin, Jason Patric
Reviewed by PETER MALONE
In The Valley Of Elah is a very fine film, the best of American storytelling. It was written and directed by Paul Haggis who contributed to a number of action films including Casino Royale, but who also wrote the Oscar-winning Million Dollar Baby, wrote and directed the Oscar-winning Crash and contributed to Clint Eastwood’s war films, Flags Of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima. In The Valley Of Elah is a writing and directing accomplishment.
Only those well versed in the Old Testament books of Samuel will recognise the reference in the title. Elah is the valley where Saul led the Israelites to confront the Philistines, the valley where Goliath challenged the Israelites to battle and where David with his sling and stone defeated the giant and won victory for Israel. This story is recounted twice during the film, once by the war veteran played by Tommy Lee Jones and the second time by the police woman played by Charlize Theron. It is told twice to a young boy, David, so that he will understand something of what it is to be a man, something of what fear is, something of what confrontation and victory are.
This is one of the earliest films reflecting on America’s participation in the war in Iraq, reflecting on the rights and wrongs on the actual invasion, the incompetence of the Americans in the aftermath, the attitudes of the soldiers in Iraq, the conditions that they worked under, their bigoted and antagonistic attitudes towards Iraqis.
This film should be seen in the context of Brian De Palma’s 2007 film Redacted. Redacted is a much harder film. De Palma uses various devices, the communications media of the present including a video diary, television reportage, television interviews, the work of embedded cameramen and women during battles, internet websites especially You Tube, the chat rooms. By using all of these devices he emerges his audience in the reality of a special squad who are at a particular checkpoint in the city of Samara, their behaviour, their interactions, the hard attitudes they developed while in service, a raid, and, based on a true story, the rape of a 14 year old girl and the massacre of her family.
Redacted is an in-your-face condemnation as well as an alert to the realities of war, not focusing on nobility and patriotism but rather the squalid and cruel aspects which emerged in the media in the immediate years after the invasion.
Much of this kind of material is incorporated into the plot of In The Valley Of Elah. The opening credits include some kind of video diary film - which later is sent through e-mail to various characters. Once again, the modern means of communication technology are to the fore. However, this is a narrative film in the American tradition.
Tommy Lee Jones and Susan Sarandon play the parents of a young man who is missing, considered AWOL. He has just returned from Iraq. Tommy Lee Jones portrays the veteran who goes then to Fort Bragg to investigate what has happened. This gives the film the opportunity to take us right into military headquarters, to see the style and life of the soldiers in the fort, to meet the various officers as well as the soldiers who fought with the missing man. It also offers the opportunity for the characters to go into the town of Fort Bragg, to the shops, the takeaway restaurants, and the strip clubs. The film does not stint on presenting these realistic aspects of the background of war.
Charlize Theron plays a local policewoman, a detective, working with her boss, Josh Brolin, with whom she has had a relationship. When it is discovered that the death of the young man and his disappearance took place on army property, the case is taken over by the military (especially by Jason Patric). However, the character played by Tommy Lee Jones is astute, goes to the scene of the crime, realises that the body was dumped on military ground but that the crime took place in the ordinary local jurisdiction.
The film then becomes a murder-mystery and its solving. The plot is complex with Susan Sarandon as the mother arriving to identify her son and grieving over his death. The couple have already lost one child in the military. The film highlights the grief that many American families have felt in the years after the invasion of Iraq.
There is also a sub-plot concerning Charlize Theron and her bringing up of her son - and the occasion for some very moving sequences when Tommy Lee Jones visits the household and encounters the boy with whom he is awkward but with whom he forms a bond.
The film is interesting in its detective work. Various clues are given, followed through and eventually a plot is unmasked. It is not quite what the audience is expecting - and there have been some diversions along the way, especially concerning Mexican drug dealers. This drug theme is very important - even the murdered boy was on drugs, something which his parents would not believe or could not understand, with the other soldiers saying that they concealed this truth because they wouldn’t want their own parents to know. This is another comment on contemporary America, the drug culture, the role of the parent generation and the deceptions of the young.
What is finally revealed is the same kind of attitude that was dramatised in De Palma’s Redacted. There is bigotry against the Iraqis, violence towards them - which has savage repercussions on the emotions and consciousness of many of the young men who have been sent to serve there.
The film offers excellent performances by all, an interesting and intriguing mystery to be solved, an awareness of the reality of the war in Iraq and the occupation, a challenge to presuppositions and expectations about the role of America in the world and its soldiers and occupying forces.
At the beginning of the film, Tommy Lee Jones shows a Latin-American migrant how to raise the national flag, not putting it upside down as he has, that signalling that there is a desperate crisis and the country is in need. Receiving the flag by mail from his son before he left for Iraq, the final gesture of the film is to raise the flag again - but upside down. The message is clear.
Winner of the SIGNIS award at the Venice Film Festival of 2007.