Jarhead: Oo-rah Booya

What an amazing film. There have been many movies that deal with the strange disconnect between one's war life and home life. Cryptonomicon had passages about the idea, and that must have colored what I saw here in Jarhead, but even so, there was a class in Jarhead that I haven't seen elsewhere. It says many things that I have not heard before, yet make a lot of sense, and it doesn't say it directly. Sam Mendes is British, that's probably why. He knows how to paint something for you, and then say it, but in a simple enough way that it was the painting that you think of when the words are spoken. What I mean to say is, that the final words of Jake Gyllenhaal evoke all the imagery of the entire film. That's an accomplishment.

And the imagery is absurd. Is resounding. I'm envious of the production that made this possible. The scope that's suggested in the desert. Stands next to Lawrence of Arabia, and in some ways surpasses it because of the insane nighttime fire stuff. Beautiful, horrifying. And yet not that canned epic every large-scale film tries for. It somehow remained a small story in a huge setting. The emotion on Gyllenhaal's face as he stands, and just looks. It's unsurprising when he does outwardly emote. The simple look communicates everything to the point that the action is a followthrough. And I love that he kind of goes insane, then comes back when he returns home. Rather than have him just go further and further nuts, we see that war, the desert, and in many ways most of all, the company of marines, starts to change the shape of his brain, and when he returns to our society, he slowly mends. Still, those ending words put a cap on that thought.

Grace. The film felt like when you are on the verge of crying, but you don't want to miss anything, so you hold it in a little longer. Deakins and Newman help fuel that oil fire.