american sniper

So I saw commercial movies two days in a row, something that will almost certainly never happen again in my life.   This time it was "American Sniper," the megahit directed by Clint Eastwood about Chris Kyle, the highly decorated Iraq veteran who was killed by another veteran, whom he was trying to help, a couple of years ago.

Couple of comments:

1.  Quality.--I thought it was very good, a much better movie than "Selma," although lacking equivalent moral inspiration.    This may have been intentional, see below.   Bradley Cooper was absolutely astounding--I had trouble telling which was the real guy (at the end) and which the actor.

2.  Message.--A lot of people saw this movie as celebrating war generally and (specifically) the war in Iraq.    I wonder if they say the same movie that I did.   What I saw was a guy, courageous but wholly naive, thrown into a situation he knew nothing about, brutalized beyond belief, then (with others like him) more or less abandoned when he came home.   And the movie is clear that his redemption, so to speak, comes when he stops trying to save Americans by killing Iraqis and starts trying to save Americans by, well, saving Americans, with this charitable and rehabilitation work.    If this was a prowar movie, I'd hate to see an antiwar one.

3.  Eastwood.--I can't speak for others, but his movies--notably Letters from Iwo Jima (the one from the Japanese viewpoint) and this one--affected me more than any other "antiwar" films.   It may be that people want an anti-Bush movie rather than an anti-war movie.   But I think it's much more effective this way.   You can hate Bush and still want more wars: all you have to do is say, the next President (Obama, Clinton, maybe another Bush) is more honest so this time it's OK.   Eastwood's message is universal.

It was interesting to see this and Selma on successive days.   Selma was a somewhat wooden movie with a deep emotional core.   American Sniper was a very powerful movie with a somewhat hollow or empty core.   But I think that was Eastwood's point: this guy was incredibly heroic, but what exactly was he fighting for?   The irony is that Selma, which is supposed to be a "critical" film, finishes up in an almost celebratory mode.   American Sniper, supposed to be "conservative," left me deeply disturbed. 

P.S. To give you an idea of the impact of this movie, if you Google "American," it comes up third after American Airlines and American Eagle (really the same thing).   If you try "Chris Kyle," it comes up by the time you reach "Ch."   That can't be all people who want to redeem George Bush.