Metcalf's DVD Screening Room: July 26, 2008

Bayside resident Mark Metcalf is an actor who has worked in movies, TV and on the stage. He is best known for his work in "Animal House," "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Seinfeld."

In addition to his work on screen, Metcalf is involved with the Milwaukee International Film Festival, First Stage Children's Theater and a number of other projects, including the comedy Web site, comicwonder.com.

He also finds time to write about movies for OnMilwaukee.com. In this week's installment of the Screening Room, Mark looks at "In the Valley of Elah."

IN THE VALLEY OF ELAH (2007)

If the truth about the War in Iraq is the truth they are telling in "In the Valley of Elah," then I wouldn't want to hear it, either.

But, I feel I must watch it.

Elie Weisel and a thousand other people who saw World War II through the eyes of people in concentration camps have said that we must bear witness. We must testify. We must not forget. I think the truth about war, any war, every war must be told and must be witnessed, and must not be forgotten.

My son is 13 and I don't want him to have to know how ridiculously, stupidly awful it can be out in the world. How horrible people can be to each other. How far outside of themselves very good people can come and how it can drive them mad, to the point where they will do unspeakable things to innocent people. War can do that.

I hung out with a guy in the hills of Oregon during the middle years of what was known as the Vietnam War, a guy who had been over for a tour but was back "in the world," laying low, staying close to the wilderness, recovering. He had shot a 10-year-old boy who was running across the middle of a village towards a bunch of GI's. They thought the kid had dynamite strapped to him, and he had been told to run to the soldiers and when he got there a Viet Cong would shoot him and blow him and the GI's up. This was a relatively common occurrence and my friend knew it and suspected that was what was happening so he shot the boy before he got to the soldiers. I don't remember whether this boy did have dynamite strapped to him, but it doesn't really matter. What matters is that my friend woke up nearly every single night in terror from the dreams the memory gave him. If it hadn't been for the very mellow dope we were able to get up in those hills, he might have gone mad. And madness sometimes breeds more violence.

That's what "In the Valley of Elah" is trying to tell us. That men and women see things and do things in war that change them utterly. I knew that, at least I suspected it. But what am I to do with that information? I wished no one ever again had to live in a place where strangers hated him or her enough to strap a bomb to a child and send the child into a crowded place to kill and maim. I wish no young men or women had to live thousands of miles from their families and live with the constant threat of being killed by a sniper that they will never see, or hear. And I'm naïve enough to think that it is actually possible. I don't think war is inevitable.

The movie "In the Valley of Elah" tells us over and over again that war, especially this war in Iraq, is insane and that it drives the young men and women who are entrusted with fighting it insane and can make them do mad, unforgivable things. Now common sense tells me that that can't be true for everyone that goes over there. After seeing six movies about this war and reading a lot of reports from people fighting it, as well as some reports in the mainstream media, I believe it is true for some and, maybe, just maybe, it is true in a general way for all everyone.

Maybe we are all changed utterly, inevitably, and irretrievably by the war that is being fought in our name in the Middle East right now. In other words, maybe the metaphor at the end of the film, when the Tommy Lee Jones character flies the American flag upside down, a universally acknowledged distress signal, maybe that metaphor is a sound one and we all are dangerously damaged and on the verge of losing ourselves and our dignity forever.

The film is directed by Paul Haggis, who directed "Crash," which won an Academy Award a couple of years ago. I thought "Crash" was interesting filmmaking but a somewhat pat, easy response to the racism in America today. I may have to watch it again and re-evaluate it. I think, in a way, "In the Valley of Elah" suffers from the same easy liberalism. I think its politics are too obvious, too simple and therefore dismissible, and the subject is too important to allow it to be dismissed.

For reasons I can't quite put my finger on, I don't care about that. I think it is effective. I can go entire weeks without thinking about the people that are fighting and dying, not just Americans, but Iraqis, Afghanis and Pakistanis. And I can go a week without thinking about the politicians who put them in harms way or the reasons they did that and whether they should have been trusted or should ever be trusted with important matters again. I could even stand to live in denial and never think about it again.

But I think I would be wrong to do so. I think I would be endangering my son and myself and dooming us all to repeat the same stupidities again. So I will watch "In the Valley of Elah" again, I will read some of the blogs of soldiers who are fighting the war, and I will think about it and talk about it, and try to be informed when I do so. And I will vote when I have the opportunity, vote for a way to put a stop to the violence of human against human, to the violence of power.