American Sniper
If you had told me last year that Clint Eastwood’s “American Sniper” would emerge as the most polarizing film of the past Oscar season, I would have laughed you off and called you crazy. However, it says something about the gulf that exists in our increasingly-partisan debate arena when what might have been greeted as a standard-issue war drama, inspired by real events, had it come out 20 years ago turns into a hot potato both sides of the divide lob back-and-forth, useful for both in their discussions as to why the other is wrong. And yet, here we are, less than two months after it’s wide release, and even people who haven’t seen it have chimed in on it’s worth. Now, having finally seen it myself, it’s my turn to do so.
Just taking into account what we see on film, Chris Kyle led a life that seems both ordinary and extraordinary at the same time. In his 20s, he was making a living as a modern day cowboy, riding horses in the rodeo and making a decent living. When he sees a terrorist attack on an American embassy, though, he makes a decision to join the military. At first, he seems headed for the Marines, but the Navy Seals become his calling, and we see him going through some of the most rigorous training this side of “Full Metal Jacket.” It’s in these scenes, as well as depictions of a childhood hunting trip with his father, that we see Kyle’s real aptitude as a soldier– tracking a target, and taking it out. Kyle becomes a sniper, and when 9/11 happens, his gifts turn him into an essential asset to the boots on the ground in Iraq, while his 160-plus official kills turn him into a legend, the most lethal sniper in American military history. His four tours in Iraq become increasing tough to take for Kyle, though, and especially his wife, Taya, who feels a disconnect from her husband, and father of their two children, when he’s home between tours.
During the scenes in Iraq, a great many of Kyle’s comrades in arms call him “legend” for his actions that have kept them safe. Watching the film, taking it at face value, I can certainly see where that came from, because he has to make some difficult choices, and in the grand scheme of things, they made American soldiers safer. It would be wrong, however, to simply dismiss “American Sniper” as modern day mythmaking, though, propaganda filmmaking out of Hollywood (with a very specific vantage point) intended to canonize Kyle as the legend his fellow soldiers thought he was. Eastwood is uninterested in such things, and all you need to look at is his underrated 2006 film, “Flags of Our Fathers,” which cut through the PR iconography of the act of raising that American flag on Iwo Jima (and the picture that became a rallying point for a nation), to understand that. The screenplay by Jason Hall, working from the autobiography by Kyle, Scott McEwen and James Defelice, is more interested in outlining the changes Kyle experienced psychologically from his time in the military, having to make specific choices about who lives and who dies, and how they made adjustment to life at home difficult. Indeed, the last 10-15 minutes of the movie is all about how Kyle, who suffered from PTSD, begins to cope with just being a family man, and finds a new way to serve his country before a fateful trip to a shooting range with a fellow PTSD vet, who killed Kyle and a friend. The material in the film between, and after, Kyle’s tours in Iraq are the emotional backbone of the film, and really highlight the strengths in the performances by Bradley Cooper (as Kyle) and Sienna Miller (as Taya) in a way few of the Iraq sequences can, although the film as a whole succeeds in it’s mission as a case for aiding veteran’s ability to readjust to life off the battlefield.
We become emotionally invested in Kyle’s story, but unfortunately, not in the people around him, other than Taya and (when they arrive) his children. Yes, there are soldiers who work with Kyle whom we come to know to an extent, but they are kept at arm’s length compared to Kyle. This is one of the film’s big missteps: because the emotional load is all on Kyle as a character (and given it’s his story, told from his perspective, this does make sense), everyone else gets marginalized, and that muted the emotional impact of the film profoundly. When people are dying (or under fire) around Kyle, we see them less as individuals to sympathize with, but what witnessing this means for Chris Kyle, and sometimes, those sequences feel like something out of a standard issue action movie rather than a vivid recreation of actual events. Given that this is based on a true story, and that these people were all living, breathing individuals at some point, this is not an insignificant flaw. When I watch “Saving Private Ryan,” it’s like a gut punch to watch one of the members of the platoon tasked with finding Private Ryan die, or see the mother of the Ryan boys get the word that three of her four sons have died, and though inspired by real people, no doubt, they are still fictionalized characters from the mind of screenwriter Robert Rodat. I didn’t have that same feeling for most of the people on screen in “American Sniper,” and these are events that took place in the last decade. I know Eastwood is capable of creating such a connection, like he did in his twin Iwo Jima epics (“Flags of Our Fathers” and “Letters From Iwo Jima”) or his Oscar-winning masterpiece, “Unforgiven,” so it felt odd not to get that feeling from his latest film.
I never met Chris Kyle in real life. I’ve never read his book. I feel like I know him a bit better based on this movie, and a lot of articles, from both sides of the political spectrum, have had a lot to say about the man, and the movie Clint Eastwood made of this part of his life. If people consider him a patriot and a hero, that is certainly their right, and based on what we see of his time in the military in this film, and what we see he started to try and do for veterans like himself who were having difficulty acclimating themselves back home, I can see a case being made for both. I can also see a case made for him being a flawed, single-minded individual with regards to the people he came in contact with in Iraq, calling them “savages” with frequency, without much distinguishing between the insurgents and civilians, and not really interested in other viewpoints for what we were doing in Iraq. Eastwood’s film has been criticized for how it doesn’t really explore the “whys” of the Iraq war, but that’s unfair, as he is simply tasked with telling the story of Chris Kyle, and he did not ask those “whys” himself, so why should Clint? (Besides, other films exist that have done that.) “American Sniper” is not a great film, though there is much in terms of technical prowess, and in Bradley Cooper’s performance, that is great. Nor is it just a film that blindly celebrates the military with rah-rah jingoism and devotion. What the film is is a film that tells a story worth telling in a way that presents us with a subject that feels black-and-white, but in reality, is not that easy to pin down, which sums it up nicely not just for Chris Kyle, but the wars he fought both abroad, and at home.
