JARHEAD

[timepiececlock]

I've got two words for you:

"Field fuck!"


Ohhhhhh yeah.

A brief review:

That was certainly interesting. It's a movie that lingers in your consciousness after you leave the theater, not particularly because of the moral/philosophical questions raised, but because of the style and overall emotional impression the film leaves you with. It's both innocuous and dramatic. Most of all, it really makes you feel like you're out there: breathing dust and sand, dying of heat, and having the absolute worst time of your life.

I can't think of a single thing in this movie that misfired. The acting was great. The script was great. The soundtrack was fucking awesome. Visually, the movie was very balanced, light and dark with surreal and harsh.

Still, I think I'd give it an A-. I'm not sure why exactly, because I can't think how it could have been done better, but at the same time I know I've seen a few films just a little greater than this one, and they get the A+ score.

Did I mention this movie was funny? It was. Funnier than I expected.


I think my favorite scene in the movie was the meeting with the horse. I've never read the book so I don't know if that happened or not, but I know what it meant for the film's symbolism: he was the horse, covered in oil and lost in desert.


EDIT: Oh, and if you need some incentive to see this movie, let me tell you about the gratuitous naked man skin that populates the entire film. I swear, there's a scene about 1/3 of the way through where, for no reason, the camera cuts to a shot of J.G.'s character, shirtless, in the middle of camp. He walks about ten feet, the camera going with him. Then the shot cuts to something else.

Just pointless gratuitous naked J.G. And believe me you see a LOT more than chest in this movie.

Comments

[angrybee.livejournal.com]

Jarhead, at least the first part, was hilarious. I haven't laughed that hard in a long time.

And I think the whole section when they were getting drenched in oil was just incredibly startling. It threw my brain for a loop.

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

Visually, that was completely awesome. I loved how the color pallet was basically nothing but black and orange for all those scenes. And that first moment where it's like rain... it was oddly sad. I think it was JG's delivery when he said "The earth is bleeding." And the others didn't even hear him, or care.

I liked how he was a very sensitive character/person, and you could SEE it in moments like that, but you could also see how the entire experience was driving him insane and turning him into just another jarhead mook.

[angrybee.livejournal.com]

I think that movie should win some Academy Awards. The acting was just...utterly stunning. At no point did it feel like I was watching a movie (except when the dude was vomiting sand)... The whole thing made me feel -there-, which is just the most stark and stunning thing you can do with a war film, I think.

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

The way it brought the audience to presence with the characters was the strongest thing about the movie, I think. You were THERE. And you were so -there- that even the arty parts felt real and tangible.

[donna-c-punk.livejournal.com]

I'll have to post up my full thoughts in my own Journal later, but I did like the film. It wasn't quite what I expected, yet that turned out to be for the better. Most movies you see about wars nowadays have a subtle or not-so-subtle anti-war sentiment running throughout them, or they're trying to make a political statement and half a dozen other things. Jarhead, from the POV of the character telling the story, doesn't have any of that. Even though the theme of the Vietnam War ran steadily throughout the film.

Like Swofford, the flick just doesn't seem to care. It wasn't about the politics behind Desert Shield/Storm or the fact that war only serves itself, it was about being lost, then found and ultimately lost again. The one character who came close to embodying any of that was in Kruger (brillantly played by Lucas Black) - the only guy who realized most of what was happening around them for the bullshit it was. Anything he said was shrugged off by Swofford or stamped out by Jamie Foxx's character (I can't seem to recall anything about him, other than he was a Staff Sergeant).

Visually, it was interesting. Mendes' style hasn't changed much since American Beauty (a film that, despite starring Kevin Spacey, I don't like), his preference for stark over muted colors, etc. Even in the oil field scenes you mentioned, nothing about them was glossed or toned down. (As a sidenote, I haven't read the book, either, but I put my money on the oil-covered horse being a dramatic invention for the film.) The score - original and not - was fantastic. Damn, was I having serious flashbacks to my Freshman year of High School with those songs. You down with OPP? Yeah, you know me.

The one real complaint I have is that the guy from Kansas was portrayed as a sort of a bonehead. Reckon I'd be used to that by now, but it still burns my ass.