Critic Under Fire
PODHORETZ, JOHN
Critic Under Fire The retreat from ‘Stop-Loss.’ BY JOHN PODHORETZ No one wants to see Iraq war movies. The latest major Hollywood release about Iraq, Stop-Loss, cratered at the box offi ce in...
...Its virtues are, I expect, that it is very well made, with vivid scenes of terrifying battles in the streets of Karbala or Falluja—and touching moments of reconciliation...
...ME: There you were, in a taxicab, driving down Broadway toward the movie theater in Times Square . . . MYSELF: And I told the cab driver to let me out at Columbus Circle...
...It’s a perversion of the classic principle of fi ction, which is that people are changed by experience...
...His horse, having galloped up to a campfi re that was smoldering in the morning light, stopped suddenly, and Petya fell heavily on to the wet ground...
...He begins a conservative and ends a leftist...
...The latest major Hollywood release about Iraq, Stop-Loss, cratered at the box offi ce in its opening weekend, and fl op sweat is already pouring by the bucketful from the editing bays where the remaining three Iraq pictures are being readied for release...
...They depict battles in ways that are supposedly intended to demonstrate the horrors of war but actually revel in its glories...
...ME: Stop-loss your disingenuousness right now...
...ME: How can you be so crude as to assume that all writing about war is binary...
...Petya was galloping along the courtyard, but instead of holding the reins he waved both his arms about rapidly and strangely, slipping farther and farther to one side in his saddle...
...ME: Chickenhawk...
...ME: So it’s schematic...
...Our hero begins as a gung-ho guy and ends up going AWOL...
...I’m about to turn 47...
...moviegoer must be permitted to speak...
...You are the fi lm critic of THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...He begins by obeying orders in an unjust war and ends by breaking the law to protest injustice...
...And that is why I hate them...
...Most movies that feature a character taking a “journey,” following an “arc” that causes his growth as a human being, are schematic...
...There’s probably a well-done scene in or just outside a Wal-Mart...
...MYSELF: When Hollywood begins to approximate the merest semblance of the greatness of Tolstoy, then maybe we can talk...
...If I found it impossible to see movies with which I disagreed ideologically, I would have given up on the medium a long time ago...
...MYSELF: Yes, I was...
...Box-offi ce analysts make the point that downbeat movies always face an uphill climb...
...It just means that they are affected by what happens to them...
...He begins— ME: All right...
...Making a war movie that denies an audience this kind of satisfaction is an act of storytelling perversity...
...He begins immature and ends mature...
...You gathered all that from reviews...
...ME: Why would I ever want to talk to you...
...The John Podhoretz, editorial director of Commentary, is THE WEEKLY STANDARD’s movie critic...
...You know you didn’t want to see this because you are a bloodthirsty neocon who thrills only to the drumbeat of war, war, war...
...attorney’s offi ce...
...This is from three trailers and a few minutes watching Showbiz Tonight...
...In what passes for serious fi lmmaking in Hollywood, this change always occurs on a straight line...
...Life is too short to spend even two hours in a theater watching Stop-Loss...
...What of Tolstoy, who captured perfectly the heroic and the senseless in his portrait of the sudden death of 15year-old Petya in War and Peace: “Hurrah-ah-ah...
...He begins in a red state and ends up Code Pink...
...A volley was heard, and some bullets whistled past, while others plashed against something...
...MYSELF: The movie is about American military personnel who serve tours of duty in Iraq and then are compelled by the policy of “stop loss” to return there...
...Moviegoers can smell it from miles away...
...MYSELF: I don’t have to see it to do that...
...So committed am I to this straightforward approach that I will now attempt it by interviewing—myself...
...ME: This is a shocking dereliction of duty...
...ME: You were going to see Stop-Loss today...
...ME: But a character’s journey, following an arc . . . that’s Screenwriting 101...
...Its failings are that it tells a schematic story that stacks the deck...
...I have seen thousands of movies in my time...
...It is high time to cease the armchair analysis of those who refuse to attend war-in-Iraq movies and ask them directly to explain their behavior...
...That doesn’t mean people automatically grow from experience, or get better through experience, or become wiser, or become more enlightened...
...A bullet had pierced his skull...
...War, in its glory and horror, and in the greatest novel ever written...
...Enough with the parallel sentence structure...
...MYSELF: Yes, they are...
...MYSELF: I haven’t read a single review...
...Liberals say these movies are failing because Americans are so upset by an unpopular war they cannot bear even the thought of it at the multiplex...
...They leech off the powerful emotions generated by personal heroism and sacrifi ce to run down the value of personal heroism and sacrifi ce...
...These movies are exercises in hypocrisy...
...MYSELF: It’s only Screenwriting 101 over the past couple of decades...
...The reason people have always loved war movies is that they are depictions of men challenged by the most extreme circumstances, who achieve a kind of selfl essness and heroism that those of us who have not fought can only imagine—and that make those who have fought feel as though they are being honored in the telling...
...shouted Petya, and without pausing a moment galloped to the place whence came the sounds of fi ring and where the smoke was thickest...
...Or the equivalent...
...ME: What do you mean...
...Conservatives say these movies are failing because their general antiwar stance is offensive to a great many Americans...
...The truth is that there is nothing more disagreeable than an antiwar movie, and for reasons that have little to do with politics...
...I felt as though I had had an appointment for a root canal and received a cell phone call informing me that my dentist had just been named Client #8 and was pursuing an immunity deal with the U.S...
...MYSELF: When did my superego turn into James Wolcott...
...The Cossacks saw that his arms and legs jerked rapidly though his head was quite motionless...
...It is your job to see this fi lm and offer a nuanced and brilliantly insightful discussion of its virtues and, dare I say, its fl aws...
...MYSELF: Surely not everyone who stays away from antiwar movies is a chickenhawk...
...It is always for the better, and “better,” in these instances, means that its lead character or characters start out as unthinking cogs in a status-quo machine and then, following a few dark lessons in the nature of evil (as represented by corporations or a Republican-led government), emerge from their cocoons to write angry and passionate blog items for the Huffi ngton Post...
...In other words, he grows in offi ce...
...And they stay away...
Vol. 13 • April 2008 • No. 29
