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FILM LIST
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Jarhead (Nov., 2005) I blew it. And I must apologize to all the Marines who read my Jarhead column in the newspapers in early November. I confused "Hoo-Ah" (the Army shout of choice) with "Oo-Rah," the Marine cry. I got numerous emails on the mistake, the great majority of them friendly. So, I hereby grovel to all you Marines, and offer you my amended column. "Oo-Rah!" Jarhead: The Few, The Proud, The Profane The Few. The Proud. The really, really foul-mouthed. Okay, that last line isn't part of the Marine slogan. But it did cross my mind while watching Jarhead, the searing, often savagely funny look at Marines during Operation Desert Storm. Based on Anthony Swofford's fierce memoir, Jarhead is not so much a study of Desert Storm as it is a study of Marine culture and the men who embrace it-sometimes reveling in it, sometimes despising it. And always, always cursing their way through it. Q. Oh, come on. Do Marines really curse any more than those
serving in the Army, Navy, or Air Force? The consensus among Marines? Yes, they are the crudest and most foul-mouthed of the bunch. And they're *bleeping* proud of it. Oo-rah. Q. 'Oo-rah' is heard a lot in the film. What does it mean? Q. Why 'Jarhead?' Q. Discussion of sex is constant among these characters. Isn't
this a bit over the top? And apparently, that was just the beginning. The film suggests that the thoughts and conversations of Marines--at least those in Swofford's platoon--revolve around all sex, all the time. They obsess over various things they'd like to do to women, and obsess even more on the various things their wives and girlfriends might be doing with other men. Q. Were Vietnam War movies really their favorite films to watch? In the film, Marines cheer the loudest during one of Apocalypse Now's most chilling scenes-the helicopters dropping napalm on villagers while booming out Wagner's 'Ride Of The Valkyries' on speakers. Defying the films' anti-war message, the Marines instead celebrate the macabre exhilaration of fighting and killing. One has to wonder if a generation from now, Marines on their way to war will cheer wildly while watching Jarhead. Q. At one point, Swofford puts a gun to the head of another
Marine, and then to his own head. Was that just the filmmaker's
dramatic license? Q. How accurately is the Persian Gulf War depicted? But then again, the Persian Gulf War was an unusual war, which is perhaps more apparent now, two years into a far more difficult military conflict in Iraq. The Persian Gulf War was fast-the ground war lasted only four days and four hours from start to finish. It was an air war, dominated by overwhelming American firepower. A war in which the traditional American foot soldiers literally couldn't keep pace with the rapidly moving front line. This film is not so much a study of the war, but more a study of a handful of the Marines who slogged through it. Men who came under both friendly and unfriendly fire. Who worried lest the war pass them by too quickly. Who encountered charred Iraqi corpses, and the burning oil wells of Kuwait. But who never found a living, breathing enemy whom they could shoot. Q. What's a good book for more information? But it will create in viewers a grudging respect for Marines, and for all the men and women we send off to fight for us. Which is, I think, exactly the kind of reaction author Swofford and director Sam Mendes would have hoped for. Ooo-Rah. By Cathy Schultz, Ph.D.
Foxx portrays Sergeant Sykes, a Marine lifer who heads up Swofford's scout/sniper platoon, while Sarsgaard is Swoff's friend and mentor, Troy, a die-hard member of STA-their elite Marine Unit. An irreverent and true account of a war that was antiseptically packaged a decade ago, "Jarhead" is laced with dark wit, honest inquisition and episodes that are at once surreal and poignant, tragic and absurd. "Jarhead" is based on Marine Anthony Swofford's bracing memoir that took readers into his disorienting firsthand experience in the Gulf War.
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