In The Valley of Elah - Preview
Preview by Jack Foley
THIS year’s Venice Film Festival delivered a lot of critically acclaimed films, including new releases from Brad Pitt (The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford) and George Clooney (Michael Clayton).
But one that attracted a lot of awards buzz, including early Oscar talk, is In The Valley of Elah, the new film from writer-director Paul Haggis (of Crash, Million Dollar Baby and Casino Royale fame).
The film is based on the true story of a soldier who goes missing after serving in Iraq and the attempts of his parents (played by Tommy Lee Jones and Susan Sarandon) to find out what happened to him. Charlize Theron plays a detective who is also assigned to the case.
Haggis describes the film as a moral mystery more than a murder mystery which asks some pretty searching questions about the war on terror.
But it’s not necessarily a directly political film, adds the director in an interview with Entertainment Weekly: ‘‘It doesn’t matter if you thought going into Iraq was right or wrong. ‘Let’s set all that aside and ask: ‘What’s the hidden human cost?’ I have the same hope for [Elah] that I had for Crash – that it’ll stir debate, that people will walk out of the theatre arguing and talking about what’s happening in America.’‘
Sarandon, for her part, told the same magazine that it would be upsetting for many people, particularly because many Americans don’t realise how much the war in Iraq is damaging young men.
Critics who caught it at Venice were mostly impressed, with many hailing the performance of Tommy Lee Jones as one of his finest performances to date.
The Hollywood Reporter described it as “another eloquent, sobering assessment of the State of the Union from the director of Crash“, while Entertainment Weekly concluded: “It’s the first Hollywood Iraq movie to remind me of a Vietnam film like Coming Home, and it does more than disturb. It scalds, moves, and heals.”
The film certainly got people talking about the issue of Iraq at Venice and the toll the campaign is taking on soldiers, prompting co-star Theron to state that she hoped US forces could come home soon.
She told reporters at a press conference: “[The soldiers] are doing a very, very important job and it’s a dangerous one. Hopefully they can come back and be looked after, that’s the least we can do for them.”
And Haggis also ridiculed claims that his film was merely jumping on the anti-war bandwagon in a year that’s been dominated by big budget American movies commenting on the war on terror. He insisted: “I laugh when I hear these statements that Hollywood is jumping on the bandwagon because the American public is turning against the war.
“We started work on the film in 2003, when the president had an 80% approval rating, everyone even in the neighbourhood where I live was driving around with flags on their cars, and the president was saying it was unpatriotic to even question this war.”
In The Valley Of Elah is due for a UK release in January next year.