Some thoughts on American Sniper

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I saw American Sniper back in December at a WGA screening. I wasn’t expecting anything at all; I hadn’t enjoyed a Clint Eastwood movie for quite some time (and he’s one of my very favorite directors). I found the movie to be an unusually gripping, intense, brutal and morally complex character study. I also found it to be Clint Eastwood’s best movie, by a wide margin, since Unforgiven. I had no idea how it would do; Eastwood hasn’t had a hit in a while, so I assumed it would come and go.

Now it’s a huge success. More than a huge success, it’s a runaway smash phenomenon. It will make more in its first week than Eastwood’s second-highest-grossing movie, Gran Torino, made in its entire run. I don’t know how to account for that, I’m greatly surprised. (I kind of assumed Selma would own this particular weekend.) There’s nothing in any of AS’s elements (Iraq war, Eastwood, its star, its length) that would indicate it becoming a hit of this magnitude. This is a serious war drama doing Marvel numbers. (Oddly enough, there is a Punisher angle to the story, but I seriously doubt anyone went to the movie expecting a Frank Castle story.)

I’m not sure why, but my Facebook and Twitter feed keep telling me it’s an evil movie, racist and jingoistic war-mongering, that it’s Triumph of the Will for the US. I’m told that the movie glorifies its central character (which I guess it does, insofar as it’s a movie about him) at the expense of the truth (I’m told he was a racist and a sociopath who gloried at killing Iraqi “savages”). Well, that may be true. Movies do that. Even “true story” movies do that. Especially “true story” movies. Every bio-pic now in theaters, or ever in theaters, leaves things out, glosses over events, compresses time, creates conflicts that never existed, combines characters and, if it needs to, makes shit up for the sake of telling its story. The Imitation Game does it, The Theory of Everything does it. Unbroken does it. Foxcatcher does it. I’ll bet even Mr. Turner does it.

It’s true that the movie doesn’t have much to say about the cause of the Iraq war, or the blundering, stupid politics of the Bush administration, or the ongoing tragedy of the entire US involvement in the region. All that is absolutely true, and I yield to no man in my outrage against the US’s misadventures in Iraq.

But why would a comprehensive history of the war be the concern of drama? All the President’s Men doesn’t take time to show Watergate from Nixon’s point of view; that isn’t the story it has to tell. American Sniper tells the story of this one character and his experiences. If that story doesn’t appeal to you, and I can certainly see why it would not, don’t go to see it, problem solved. If you’re angry about American foreign policy, great! I am too, I just don’t see why it’s necessarily the job of a movie to dissect it.

My attention has also been directed to a handful of tweets that show that some audience members took the movie to be an invitation to kill Arabs. That’s depressing and lamentable, but I keep seeing the same five tweets posted over and over again. If something is a nationwide phenomenon and you can only find five idiotic tweets about it, you’re not looking very hard. I sense the hand of rival studios promoting the hatred of a few to get the edge on a movie they see as Oscar competition.

I’ve also been informed that Clint Eastwood is racist, which, sorry, doesn’t wash. The director of Invictus, Gran Torino, Flags of Our Fathers, Letters from Iwo Jima and Bird a racist? No. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure what Eastwood’s politics are. Sure, he gave that ridiculous speech at the RNC that time, but when I watch movies like The Outlaw Josey Wales or Bronco Billy I’m struck by the artist’s tolerance, inclusiveness and humanity.