Jarhead: rated "18A" in Canada, restricted in the U.S

Catholic New Times, Dec 18, 2005 by Michael Reist

Jarhead is a hard movie to categorize. It is not an anti-war movie, nor does it celebrate or glamourize war. What it does is depict the hollowness of a "war effort" that was undertaken to defend a hollow way of life.

When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, America's oil supply was threatened, and, therefore, its way of life--a life based on production and consumption. It is a movie about the hollowness of the people this culture creates, that this culture requires. The jarheads.

"We are jarheads;" proclaims one of the soldiers. "A jar is defined as an empty vessel. We are jarheads." One of the pre-requisites for being a jarhead is to have no moral code: "Thou shalt not kill. (Expletive) that shit!" Another qualification for being a jarhead is to have no interest in politics: "(Expletive) politics. We're here. All the rest is bullshit." The dominant mood of the men in the film seems to be one of confusion, broken only by the occasional flurry of anti-Saddam hysteria.

Watching this movie in Brampton, Ont., it would be easy for one to look disparagingly down one's nose at those pathetic Americans--something Canadians, like people all over the world, like to do. But I felt there were many jarheads in the audience with me on this teenaged Friday night. I could feel it even before the movie began, and I felt it when the young men in the audience laughed uproariously at the same things the jarheads in the movie were laughing at. I felt there was a sympathetic connection between the young men sitting around me and the young men on the screen--a kind of confused, emptiness.

The interesting thing about Sam Mendes' depiction of these "jarheads "is that they are not portrayed as pathetic. Their "lot in life" is not shown to be tragic. They simply are what they are. There is no moralizing about them--good or bad. They are frustrated; they are pawns of forces beyond themselves; they are slaves to their animal instincts; they are treated like disposable junk people by a junk culture--and all of this is presented as status quo. There is no talking back on the part of the men in the film or on the part of the director. He is simply depicting life in the Marines.

In one scene the soldiers are given pills that they are told will somehow counter the effects of a possible nerve gas attack. The pills have not been tested, they are told, and they have to sign a waiver saying they will not sue the Marine Corps if anything goes wrong. When one man claims he has human rights, he is told, "You signed a contract. You don't have any human rights." There is no response from the soldiers, and there is no response from the audience. When you sign up, you don't become something more; you become something less. This seems increasingly to be a given. The individual has no power or rights. The individual is subsumed in the group--in this case the American military--and that's just the way things are.

The most common criticism the film has received is that there is not enough fighting, not enough action. The movie depicts the grunt work war requires--especially from the ground troops--and that does not make for a good action movie. The jarheads who came out this Friday night did not want to see reality depicted. They wanted an action movie. They wanted to escape from a life that is not unlike that depicted in the movie. Like the jarheads in the movie, they became confiksed about why they were there.

I went to Jarhead because I was interested to see how Americans would begin to talk to themselves about the events of the past 15 years. Perhaps it's too early. American troops are still stationed in Iraq and the death toll rises daily.

Right now, it seems, no one in America knows what this war "means."

Michael Reist is head of the English department at Robert F. Hall Catholic Secondary School in Caledon East, Ont.