In the Valley of Elah, reviewed
There’s a scene near the beginning of In the Valley of Elah, directed by Paul Haggis of Crash fame, where Sergeant Hank Deerfield, played by a stoic Tommy Lee Jones, stops in the middle of the road to fix an American flag inadvertently hung upside down at a local school. Deerfield helps a custodial man adjust the flag and explains that a flag flown in such a position is an international sign of a country in dire distress.
In this short conversation, Deerfield, a rural Tennessean, inquires as to where this man is from. Upon hearing his response, “El Salvador,” it seems we are, sadly, headed in the typical Haggis direction of race and intolerance. But Deerfield, and Haggis for that matter, is smarter than that, focusing his attention on the flag and his journey ahead of him rather than the status of the El Salvadorian’s immigration papers.
Thankfully, In the Valley of Elah continues in this vein, seeking out answers to questions seldom posed in public life concerning the military and how it affects those who serve in it. Make no doubt about it, the Iraq War is very present in this film and there’s no question as to its opinion regarding it, but what lies below the story and beyond the war is an unsettling picture of what brutality can do to a man (and yes, in this case, it’s just men).
Sergeant Deerfield has left his home in Monroe, Tennessee, to seek out his son, Mike, an Army boy just like him, who has apparently gone AWOL from his base in New Mexico after returning from 18 months in Iraq. A retired military police officer, Deerfield conducts his own investigation apart from the Army’s, enlisting the help of local Detective Emily Sanders (Charlize Theron), the only female detective in town who is already burnt out on the job. Mike Deerfield soon turns up in a field, butchered, torched, and left for the coyotes amongst the dirt and tumbleweeds.
Whether this crime is on military land or not is vague, but the local police easily give the Army jurisdiction seeing it as “one less headache for them.” It’s not that the Army wants to hide behind its authority and not speak the truth so much as it’s the frustrating face of bureaucracy refusing to bypass procedure for the sake of Deerfield’s need for understanding that further prompts him to stick his nose further into the murky affairs. The only catch is that Deerfield seems more adept at detective skills than both the local and military detectives combined, that is until his passion gets the best of his rationality.
Haggis’s television experience is most evident here; the “whodunit’ detective aspects fit the working model used in your various “Law and Orders,” but loose ends abound with purpose and Haggis has more in mind than bringing someone to justice for the sake of closure. Mixed within his quest for answers, cases of torture, brutality, and domestic violence land on Detective Sanders desk, Deerfield is haunted by the cries of his son begging to get him out of Iraq, and the son’s camera phone provides Deerfield with a distorted (literally, the dessert heat fried the media files) view of his son’s time in the war.
Unlike Crash, the interwoven storylines are tendrils that reach back and support the main story, that of Deerfield, making this film more subtle in its theme and palatable to an audience who wants to figure it out on their own (though Susan Sarandon’s portrayal of Deerfield’s wife, Joan, offers the more blatant and sentimental characterization so familiar in Haggis’s work). The tone is appropriately grim with a washed out, grainy texture and restrained performances by both Jones and Theron. Both have been beat down, Theron by her chauvinistic coworkers and single mom hardships, Jones by Vietnam, years of military police work, and the pain of having already lost his first son to combat over a decade prior.
Their performances demand you take them serious; unlike that of Crash, the events do not cause a dramatic catharsis for the characters but rather lie heavy on them, almost even soak into them. The events don’t change these people so much as they render them incapable of ignoring what they already suspected and probably already knew to be true. Like the flag flown upside down, they both realize how dire our situation has become, both in Iraq and at home.
posted by Alison @ 11:59 PM
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