Bleeding red and blue

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http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21641264-american-sniper-celebrates-regret-free-heroism-small-wonder-critics-hate-itand-half

War on film

Bleeding red and blue

“American Sniper” celebrates regret-free heroism. Small wonder critics hate it—and half of America loves it

Jan 31st 2015 | WASHINGTON, DC | From the print edition

[1] WHEN the troops return, the myth-making begins. It took four years after the Vietnam war ended for “The Deer Hunter” and “Apocalypse Now” to paint it as futile and degrading. Since then the cycle has sped up. The Iraq war already has one Oscar-winning film, “The Hurt Locker”. The success of another Iraq film, “American Sniper”, which was released on January 16th, suggests that views of that war are yet to settle. Many critics panned the film, which is more John Wayne than Wilfred Owen. Despite or, rather, because of this, it has been a hit: if early ticket sales are any guide, it will be one of the most successful war films ever made (see chart).

[2] Because of the attention it has received, “American Sniper” has been fed into the partisan threshing machine. It is not enough to have a view on the movie itself; everyone is debating the politics behind it. Writing in Salon, Sophia McClennen reckoned that Clint Eastwood, the director, “represents a dark, disturbing feature of the [Republican] mindset”. Todd Starnes, a contributor to Fox News, thought that Jesus would thank the sniper, played by Bradley Cooper (pictured), for dispatching unbelieving Muslims to the lake of fire. Howard Dean, a former Democratic governor of Vermont, claimed there was a lot of overlap between the worldview of the film’s audience and the Tea Party. Pete Hegseth, another Fox News talking head, declared that liberals hate the film because they are unpatriotic. And so on.

[3] One reason why “American Sniper” has caused such a kerfuffle is that its main character, Chris Kyle, is such an unusual Hollywood type. Film convention dictates that villains are charismatic, heroes troubled, misfits celebrated and so on. Kyle’s character is a hero with no flaws, a good man who kills without regret. At one point in the film a psychologist tries to pry into his memories, rummaging around in search of guilt. Kyle replies that his only regret is that he did not use his rangefinder and rifle to protect more marines.

[4] Characters this reluctant to examine themselves are usually either mocked or brought low. Not Kyle. His wife threatens to leave with the children if he goes back for another tour in Iraq. When he chooses duty she sticks around anyway. He never shoots an innocent—even a mother-and-boy team of grenade-throwers get the bullets they deserve. After he shoots his arch-enemy, a Syrian sniper, with a bullet that travels in slow motion, Kyle comes home for good, wrestles with something like shell-shock and beats it in around ten minutes of screen time. The viewer spends two hours expecting nemesis to visit at any moment, and then the credits roll.

[5] Throughout the film the insurgents get the sort of character development afforded to Nazi soldiers in a second-world-war romp. Kyle and his buddies refer to them as “savages”, and there is no hint from the director that they might be anything else.

[6] This is key to the film’s appeal: it is Iraq minus the bad bits, a celebration of heroism, skill and the bond between comrades. Such themes delight the half of the nation that Hollywood habitually ignores. When a director reaches out to conservatives, as Mel Gibson did with “The Passion of the Christ”, they open their wallets.

[7] The real Chris Kyle, a navy SEAL who wrote an autobiography, took more pleasure in the killing than his on-screen character does. “I’m not lying or exaggerating to say it was fun,” he wrote. A more faithful film would have been more unsettling and probably less popular.

From the print edition: United States

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partisan threshing machine

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arch-enemy
A person who is extremely opposed
arch-enemy
an especially bad enemy

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romp
romp romps romping romped
1 Journalists use romp in expressions like romp home, romp in, or romp to victory, to say that a person or horse has won a race or competition very easily.
Mr Foster romped home with 141 votes.
VERB: V adv/prep

2 When children or animals romp, they play noisily and happily.
Dogs and little children romped happily in the garden.
VERB: V

(c) HarperCollins Publishers.

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