Movie Doubles

Apropos To 'Rambo'...
The last 'movie double' I did stretched me (and credulity) a bit so I'm going to handle 2 films with at least a modicum of common concern. Today's movie double combo is 'Charlie Wilson's War' and 'Lions for Lambs'
Coming out of watching Rambo and reminiscing about the 1980s and the war in Afghanistan, it seemed appropriate to at least look at what other texts were floating around at the moment to explain the mess, so to speak.


The Fighting In Afghanistan

Afghanistan is one of those places where you grow up thinking one day they'll stop fighting. The problem is that the fighting has been going on for so long, it's become all they know. As demonised as it was at the time, the Soviet incursion into Afghanistan was fueled by the constant irritation of Afghan conflicts spilling over into mother Russia over the northern border. A little like how Chechens fight on so close to Moscow is still a irritant.

In a sense, the world jumped on the Soviets because they were communists and chose to ignore why they might drive tanks over the borders in the first place. Certainly, we would not expect the Americans to drive over the border into Mexico just because of the drug trade irritation, but in the 19th century, they did, and that's how they got California and Texas. The point is, the Afghan War for the Russians started in 1980. That's more than way over half of my life that conflict has ripped Afghanistan.

If what the 'Rambo III' movie showed was a naive pro-resistance, anti-communist posturing, 'Charlie Wilson's War' reveals that the US Government was operating with about the same idiotically simple schema. So great a perceived threat was the Soviet Communism, the US government showered the Mujihadeen with weapons with which to fight the commies. They didn't quite need John Rambo, but they sure sent a whole lot of special forces types to deliver these weapons to these people to fight the proxy war. Indeed, it was this kind of ex-military bravado of Congressman Wilson from the second ward of Texas, that culminates in the Russian retreat.

The film also covers the aftermath, where Charlie Wilson is unable to secure any money to rebuild the war-torn nation - thus laving Afghanistan to the dreadful civil wars of the 1990s.
By the time the story has moved on to the present day, it is America that is now stuck in Afghanistan fighting the war that the Russians had fought. Does this remind people of something? yes, it reminds us of the Vietnam War - ad this is where Robert Redford steps in with his film, 'Lions For Lambs'. What is clear from his film is that as well-intended as it might be, America has not really come to grips with the war it is fighting in Afghanistan.

Echoes of Vietnam - A Little Digression

Just to be a little pedantic I want to run past a pet theory of mine.
My theory goes like this: The greatest threat to the US in the 20th Century was ideology, and the two main ideologies it confronted were Fascism and Communism. In fact there are indications that FDR's long presidency fomented the conditions whereby World War II took the shape that it did. In part it pushed Japan in with the Fascists, and then aggressively blocked trade in order to provoke the attack on Pearl Harbor - yes, the Day that Lives in Infamy, that FDR worked very hard to produce. Admiral Yamamoto might have been the star villain of the day, but FDR pretty much produced that show.

The end result was Japan surrendering to the USA, and thus reverting to the Constitutional Monarchy that it was as late as 1930. Japan's problem was that after Russia it was the country with the most sold copies of Marx's 'Capital' - the Bible for Communists everywhere. So part of the reason Japan lurched to the right in the 1930s was the great fear of Communism as well as the Russian threat to the north. Which explains the Manchurian state as a project to create a buffer state.

Anyway. With the defeat of anti-communist, Fascist Japan in 1945, the USA had to become guarantor for Japan's security in exchange of Japan giving up arms 'forever' in its 'Peace Constitution' as written by MacArthur's GHQ. It was a very clever move by Shigeru Yoshida, because it produced three key results. Japan was able to be America's ally without providing arms or lives; Japan no longer had to confront Communism by itself in the Far East, that job fell to the USA; and Japan prospered economically as a result.

So the pay off of my big theory is this: the USA was fighting the Vietnam War on behalf of Japan.
That's it.
Had WWII not taken shape the way it did and Japan sided with the West, then Japan would have kept its military presence in South East Asia. It would have fallen to Japan to combat Communism in the wake of France pulling out of Indochina, not America. Instead, America got it self dragged into the slip-stream of the evacuating French, and ended up having to expand the war bit by bit - legitimacy be damned.

The logical extension to my theory is that the War in Afghanistan for the US is a war that it inherited from the Russians in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet State, just as it had inherited the Vietnam War from a vacated power in the Far East.

Still Fighting In Afghanistan

The natural question that begs to be answered is, "why are we still fighting in Afghanistan?"
Neither of these films actually come close to addressing the issue in any adequate way or form. It is clear that for both these films and film makers, Afghanistan is a phenomenon in the Husserl sense. It's out there and our cognition struggles to come to grips with it. It's just not manifestly real enough - instead it is understood through the distorted looking glass of the media. Afghanistan may as well be on Mars or in Narnia for most Americans.

'CWW' delivers on to the fact that the war in Afghanistan from the Afghan perspective is a religious war. It is Julia Roberts' Texan fundraiser character who believes in a crusade against the God-less Communists that lobbies Tom Hanks' rather sardonic, secular Charlie Wilson in supporting the Afghans against the Russians. It is also the Allah Akbar/God is Great chant that convinces Ned Beatty's Arms Committee chief to back Charlie Wilson.

Perhaps what gets lost in the shuffle is that the Afghans were willing to shake hands with the capitalist Christian 'Great Satan' in order to defeat the Godless Communists, and that alliance was never going to endure history. It's a little disconcerting that Charlie Wilson went to help these people and he reduced the help down to sending more weapons. The whole operation to Afghanistan has ballooned into the great black market for arms in Northern Pakistan, and continues to destabilise the region; but the film is incredibly *light* in discussing those issues.

In 'LFL', Afghanistan is like the surface of the meteor in 'Armageddon'. It is dark with blue light onto black edgy rocks, with deep snow. Two stranded soldiers US soldiers fight to the death with Taliban fighters we never get to see face to face. No glory-gore of Rambo IV here; just a prosaic tragedy. What's even sadder is that the best discourse the film has to offer as to why they are in Afghanistan is delivered by Tom Cruise, who says with the same Scientology-Stare to Meryl Streep "Do you want to win the War on Terror, yes or no?"
When Streep's character prevaricates, he thunders "It's a very simple question, Yes or No?"

It actually reminded me of the way he said "There'll be no more of this spectator-ism. You're either in the game or get out of the stadium!" in that horrible Scientology video that did the rounds. I think Tom Cruise's credibility as a human being took a huge hit with that interview.
Anyway, it's clear that 'LFL' is saying they don't really know why the USA is in Afghanistan, and that what it is trying to do there."

Let's face it, we live in a time when the First World is facing two ugly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as seeing the multitude of conflicts in Africa and elsewhere; and Tom Cruise's central metaphysical concern is building a five-panic-room house in Colorado for the day Xenu attacks Earth.
Err... right, Tom.

In any case, it's not entirely clear why the Americans are there but for repeated references to September 11. I don't think that is all there is to it, so I don't know why we choose to dumb ourselves down by thinking that is the case. By the same token, the film does a bit of disservice to itself there.

Cryptic Title

Just what does 'Lions For Lambs' Mean? you might ask.
It's a reference made in the film that explains it is how WWI Germans saw the English Army - that their soldiers were brave as Lions, but the Generals were like Lambs.
I'm not so sure the simile works at all. it's not that the USA command is meek. It's more like it's Blind to circumstance, Deaf to criticism and decidedly tactical when it probably needs to be thought more broadly strategic terms.
The film only delivers half the point. The big point it does deliver is that Tom Cruise really is an acting light weight when played against to Meryl Streep. He's simply awful in this film - a bit like a lamb sent out to face a lioness.

Hollywood Liberalism

The GOP always complains that Hollywood is pro-Democrat. This is from the party that boasts Clint Eastwood AND Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Still, you do kind of understand. Hanoi Jane and all that; the Hollywood mob seem incredibly keen to say no to war even though they keep making fiction filled with the stuff.

What's really galling about 'CWW' is how the film celebrates the Soviet defeat with innocent joy and yet totally fails to face up to the failure of managing Afghanistan after that moment. The film simply rolls up a quote from Wilson that says they "completely fucked up the End Game". It's a little disingenuous to leave it at that, given the size of the fiasco. And it's not something I'm willing to lay at just George W. Bush's feet, but also to his father George Herbert Walker Bush who did plenty for Gulf War I but failed to see the missed opportunities, as well as Bill Clinton who did mostly nothing of lasting importance.

The point is, it's a bit on the nose to say it was "their fault". It was collectively, all our faults we chose to look after our backyards instead of addressing real, serious problems that were emerging out there. The wide-eyed "Oh boy shucks" of 'CWW' is totally not what the doctor ordered.

'LFL' fares a little better in that it is willing to discuss the notion of winning the hearts and minds of the Afghan people, but it's spoken by Tom Cruise's character Jasper Irving, who thinks he's going o accomplish this through winning some battles. So in the end, nobody comes up with a concrete plan to do that; they simply disagree with more fighting. I can see why the GOP might object to Hollywood liberalism.

For my part, I'm not sure more fighting is the answer. If anything they need to come up with a strategy for demilitarising and disarming these people. And Armies can be handy for that. In any case, it's clear that the writers in Hollywood can barely get their heads around conceiving of the war in Afghanistan as an extension of "9/11"; what chance have they got of seeing the war as part of the great counter-colonial struggle in that part of the world? In neither film do the film making teams offer any concrete alternatives to the fiascoes going down in Afghanistan.

It's easy objecting to a war, and an unpopular war at that. It's another thing to conceive of how to extricate the First World from the mess that is Afghanistan. In that sense the Hawks are right to grumble about Hollywood for taking the easy shots without offering an alternative option. To date, it's been send in Iron Man, send in Rambo, send in a couple of young actors to play soldiers.

On Robert Redford

Before Tom Cruise was the pretty boy of Hollywood that could sell schlock with his smile, there was Robert Redford. Robert Redford the actor was such an All-American boy it seemed like he was caste from a mold. The blond, blue- eyed visage, the controlled, mellifluous voice, the bolt-upright posture, the glance, the smile, all added up to the definition of a Hollywood Movies Star.

Since then it's actually remarkable how few men have actually stepped into that mold. As it turned out, they really haven't been able to make another one of these guys. Perhaps America has moved on, and perhaps even the demographic has moved on. After all, how hyper-Aryan -looking could you get beyond Robert Redford?

An yet Redford has continually made films that are against the fascist impulses of America. My favorite performance by Redford is possibly his work in 'All The President's Men' where his understated delivery underlined the gritty realism of that picture. He never got histrionic with that role, while Dustin Hoffman was let loose on the Bernstein character like a hungry hound.

The most problematised role for me is actually his part in 'The Natural'. He was simply too old to have played that role of Roy Hobbs - he looks stiff and ungainly, and you never quite buy the time line of events as a result. In any case, I still like the film and it's not like he ruins it for me; but I do remember sitting alone in the dark watching the film thinking, "this is kinda wrong, no?"

I recall being at AFTRS, and they showed 'Out of Africa' as a case where a star can distort the script. The contention was that having cast Redford against Streep, they had to expand that role to accommodate his star stature, an that this resulted in a bad script. While I never liked the film all that much, I always thought it was a great move to have Redford in it. It was interesting to see he cast Streep to play the journalist. in 'LFL'. It certainly evoked a lot of memories. It even occurred to me that they sure haven't found more where he came from.
He means well, and he's shown spine, and that's a whole lot better than many who earn stardom in Tinseltown. The last Redford sequence in 'LFL' where he puts on the jacket and ushers out the kid almost seems like a goodbye note to the audience.