WAR AND SADNESS "IN THE VALLEY OF ELAH"

With 9 / 11 and the subsequent war in Iraq there are more and more films discussing the matter; giving the pros and the cons and the different ideas and opinions as to what is going on. In the valley of Elah is one of these films. I am actually doing my dissertation on war films by the way so over the course of the next couple of weeks you will be hearing about these films quite a bit. I may even do a week on them but more about that later. First let’s take a look at the film in hand. Hank Deerfield (Tommy Lee Jones – one of my favorite actors incidentally) has the misfortune of getting the call every parent who has a son or daughter in the armed forces dread: “your son is missing”. The irony of the situation being that the young man did not get lost on the battlefield but actually back in the United States, when they had just returned from the tour in Baghdad. An ex-serviceman himself, Deerfield is determined to figure out the full truth of what has happened to his son. With the help of Emily Sanders (Charlize Theron) Deerfield starts his own investigation in the face of the apathy of the institutions. First of all, as you may have guessed the story does contain some quite open political overtones and messages. I am not going to get into that – this blog was not set up for politics. So let’s concentrate on the film itself. And the film itself is quite something. First of all, the film is quite brilliant as a crime / murder mystery alone. I mean I grant you, having a single hero – Hank – who just happened to be a retired intelligence officer doing a better job than the entire police force by himself is a bit “old”. But the film does save this particular gimmick by making him a middle aged man with a lot of flaws in his character – he is in fact a rather difficult man all in all. Tommy Lee Jones’s rugged charisma fits the role very well and they go well together with Susan Sarandon who plays his wife. Although there are a few “types” among the characters, but what I really liked about them is the fact that none of them are perfect. And the flaws in their characters do not look slightly off, as they do in some films, some times a flaw is there simply because the writers reckoned the characters turned out too perfect. Here we have very real and realistic people portrayed – the benefits of having an Oscar® winning writer / director (Paul Haggis, director of Crash) on the crew I suppose =) In the valley of elah is, above and beyond everything, a look into the human psyche and the way it reacts under pressure. In the valley of elah is definitely up there in good company along with a series of war films that look at the states of mind and changes in character that occur in prolonged combat. And it is of course very sad and in bits rather hard to watch but definitely worth it. By the way, just found out that Tommy Lee Jones was actually nominated for an Academy award with this role. Well deserved says I.