Inglourious Sniper?

Recently I saw a movie which has lots of people talking:  “American Sniper”, the story of Chris Kyle.  CK served as a Navy SEAL sniper in Iraq for four tours.  This involved shooting people.  Bad people.  The movie made some people upset.  I have not read CK’s memoirs, so I’m going off the movie by itself.  I expect most people will do so as well, though some may well be induced to follow up with the book after seeing the movie.  I don’t plan on it.   

And I’m posting this on Wednesday instead of Friday for two reasons: first, I’ll be out of town this Friday, and second, for those of you who haven’t seen it, that’s two more days for you to get down to the multiplex and see it while it's still playing in the movie theaters (IMAX is optional).  By the way, there’s a short memorial to Chris Kyle at the end of the film, a montage of pictures of his funeral in Texas, which was as big an affair as the passing of a head of state.  I was seated in the middle of the row and couldn’t leave my seat until this was over, as NO ONE got up until the whole thing was over – and the whole room applauded.  Mind you, this is in Blue State Zone, Fairfax County Virginia, which went for Obama in 2008 and 2012.  Go figure.

Let’s review the movie, in basic terms.   CK is a rodeo dude from Texas.   He sees 9/11 and decides to join up – and to “be all he can be” (yes, I know that’s the Army’s old slogan) as a Navy SEAL.  After surviving and passing the grueling training which SEALs have to endure, he’s sent to Iraq.  Even after surviving his first tour and having a wife (Sienna Miller) and kids at home, he volunteers for subsequent tours (4 in all), much to his wife’s anger and resentment.  Each time he’s sent back to Iraq and pretty much does the same thing:  sniping at bad guys.  Somehow he survives, but it’s not a given that he’ll make it out alive.  Many of his buddies don’t.

Coward?  That’s an issue Michael Moore raised.  I wonder if he actually saw the movie.  He clearly doesn’t know anything about snipers, because if he did, he’d know that despite being nominally hidden and taking shots at a distance, snipers are still in danger – especially from other snipers.  “Enemy at the Gates” – based on a true story – covers the battle between Red Army sniper Vasily Zaitsev (Jude Law) vs. German sniper Major Koenig (Ed Harris); Zaitsev’s kills include 11 other snipers.  Other WWII snipers have even higher kill scores for enemy snipers.  In this film CK is engaged in a campaign with an Iraqi sniper who nearly kills him.  And at various points, when CK ascertains he can’t find any targets from up on the roof, he joins the grunts down on the ground clearing apartments block by block.  He routinely faces danger.   Whatever else he might have been, coward doesn’t apply. 

Propaganda.  A parallel was made with Quentin Tarantino’s movie “Inglourious Basterds”, which was QT’s attempt at making an offbeat WWII film.  A German sniper, Zoller (Daniel Bruhl) tries to romance a French girl, Shosanna (Melanie Laurent), oblivious to her hatred of Germans, no matter how heroic they might be.  The Nazis have made a movie glorifying Zoller (a film-within-a-film) which Zoller arranges to have premiere at Shosanna’s little French theater.  The Nazi top brass will be attending the premiere, so the good guys decide it’s a great opportunity to try something explosive and take them all out.   Naturally we don’t get to see a complete sniper film, just bits and pieces.

In this case the movie is naturally sympathetic to CK, but less than enthusiastic about trumpeting the entire Iraq war.  Clearly the bad guys are bad guys: Al-Zarqari (whatever his name is) has an enforcer who kills Iraqis who betray Al Qaeda to the Americans, and he likes to use a drill to do so, even against children.  Recall, however, that not only did Clint Eastwood do this film, he also made a pair of WWII films, “Flags of Our Fathers” (about the raising of the flag on Iwo Jima, told from the US perspective) and “Letters From Iwo Jima” (the same story, dovetailed from the Japanese perspective).   A filmmaker can tell a story about a sympathetic soldier without necessarily endorsing the cause the soldier fights for.  The local Catholic newspaper, which reviews films to screen them for moral issues and religious topics, put it very well: “Yet the film avoids any big-picture moral assessment of the specific struggle in which he participated or of armed clashes in general.” 

The perfect example is Erwin Rommel, the “Desert Fox” of WWII.  Easily Germany’s most capable commander, he was also a man of such skill and integrity that even hard-asses like Winston Churchill couldn’t resist admiring him.  There was even a US movie made in the 1950s, “The Desert Fox”, with James Mason as Rommel.  Rommel, however, redeemed himself in the eyes of the Allies by being executed by Hitler for having a tangential role in the plot to kill the Fuhrer in July 1944. 

Yet Heinz Guderian, the top German Panzer general, arguably as talented as Rommel, never got a movie.  His deal was that he was temporarily relieved of duty for several months but eventually reinstated when Hitler realized he needed someone competent – even if Guderian lacked the tact and sense to simply tell Hitler what he wanted to hear.  But Guderian never joined the anti-Hitler group, mainly because he realized that (A) the group was doomed to failure, and (B) with the Allies insisting on unconditional surrender, regime change in Berlin wouldn’t save Germany anyway.  The Americans were impressed enough with him to encourage him to write memoirs, but unlike Rommel, no one made a movie glorifying him.

Even Dante, of all people, recognized “virtuous pagans” such as Virgil, who served as his guide through Hell and Purgatory.  Sooner or later someone may make a movie about Saladin, who is the Muslim warlord most amenable to Christian admiration.  He appears in “Kingdom of Heaven”, a film which is mostly unfavorable towards the Crusaders. 

If you’re convinced that any movie which sympathetically portrays a soldier is, ipso facto, per se, propaganda for the soldier’s country, side, and cause, well… I can’t argue with a sick mind.  Agree to disagree.

Anyhow.  Jesse Ventura attacked the movie for suggesting a connection between Saddam Hussein and 9/11.  The suggestion is highly attenuated:  CK sees the Twin Towers collapsing on 9/11, gets upset, volunteers for the military, and gets sent to Iraq.  I missed the part when ANY character explicitly makes a connection between Saddam Hussein and 9/11.   Apparently CK was already in the Navy when 9/11 occurred, so 9/11 could not have been his motivation for joining the military.  Again, the connection is very slim.

There is some issue in here about CK targeting women and children.  According to the movie, they were armed and attempting to kill US soldiers.  Contrast that with “Full Metal Jacket”, in which a door gunner on a Huey in Vietnam takes delight in shooting Vietnamese civilians.  Asked by “Joker” (Matthew Modine) how he can shoot women and children, the gunner laughs, “easy, you don’t lead them as much.” 

Finally, one of CK’s comrades in Iraq starts having second thoughts about the war and begins articulating them, discreetly, to CK.  Later the man’s mother reads out a letter her son wrote to her, which goes into more detail.  CK himself appears immune to doubt, but not everyone in the film is so sure of the US position as he is.  This ingredient in the film is a large counterbalance to CK’s gung ho attitude yet gets ignored when the film is criticized as “propaganda”.  Seriously, if Josef Goebbels was watching this, he’d wind up in a “bitch please” meme.

If you understand Eastwood and what he tends to do with his films, you’ll understand why the film was done the way it was.  I expect he distilled the essence of CK and showed him as imperfect but skilled.  The man was a sniper in a nasty war.  He accepted what he was told and didn’t question authority or policy.  He had a difficult time adjusting to civilian life, as many veterans do.  While he may have exaggerated somewhat in some ways and puffed up his own achievements by some degree (debatable), when you strip it down to what we can confirm and verify, you’re still left with an impressive character.  If you can grasp distinctions, you can understand that he was a minor hero, and we can celebrate his story without devolving into propaganda.