The Screening Spires
Films with a pacifist flavour are nothing new; we have spent almost as long castigating ourselves in the cinema for our armed combat indulgences as we have making films at all. Their futility may be glaringly obvious (did Hitler get second thoughts about his Polish plans after seeing All Quiet on the Western Front?), but we just keep getting them.
However, we have only just got the first ever genuine anti-war film - and very refreshing it is too, after the best part of a decade of propaganda disguised as a ‘war film’ (Saving Private Ryan? A better title for it would have been Kelly’s Heroes, But Less Fun and With a Shamefully Pro-war Ending Eulogising Soldier Legitmating the Act of War, And All). It’s been a long time coming, but we now have at last in Jarhead, the world’s very first true anti-war film. “But Mr.
Lowry, sir,” I hear you cry after giving you permission to speak, “what about Paths of Glory? Platoon? Full Metal Jacket? Apocalypse Now?” “Wait a second,” I say soothingly as you calm down, “I mean anti-war film in the sense of antihero, or ‘the reverse of’ get it?” Instead of Jake Gyllenhaal showing Charlie where he can stick his communism, or giving the Boche a good thrashing, Sam Mendes treats us to two hours of him and his comrades hanging around waiting for a Gulf War
hat never really gets going in the first place. And it is wonderful: a war film with barely a sliver of any actual war to merit the title, although there is the obligatory black hardnut sarge. So, Hollywood being the cannibalistic town it is, we can expect this new idea to now be done to death.
How’s about the anti-romcom, where Sophia Myles sits around all day waiting for love, nothing much happening, until she dies old and alone? Or the anti-film noir, where Tim Roth meets a lovely, unmurderous woman who divorces her husband in a fair settlement, leaving him his millions, and they open a dry cleaners together. I particularly like the sound of an anti-sports film, where hard training and dedication merely result in a midleague placing and a second-round cup knockout.
I’m counting the days until the antidrug film, where Jared Leto holds down a middle management job and has three children, all despite a sideline performing fellatio for crack. I have seen the future.
19th Jan 2006