Movie: In the Valley of Elah
Like most of you, I haven’t seen most of the war/terrorism movies that have come out over the last few years. Regardless of your political and philosophical leanings though, I would recommend In the Valley of Elah
It’s a movie that follows the “show, don’t tell” school of storytelling. The relationships are not explained in words. The characters are not described conveniently by some third-party. You see what you see, and the details are there to fill in everyone’s backgrounds—who each of these characters are.
Almost everything presented on screen is sparse—the dialog, the settings, the camera movements. It’s a movie that is not afraid of silence. But the textures, the tones, and the feelings that come out of this movie’s sparseness are rich and robust. I found myself following the mystery with Memento-like intensity. For the entire two-hour running time, I never once wanted to stop or found myself bored.
It’s been a long, long time since I watched a movie that assumed I was intelligent. For so much of the movie, I was engrossed and engaged.
And then came the last two minutes. It seems like writer and director Paul Haggis lost faith in me at the end. All through the film, he didn’t repeat unnecessarily. He didn’t explain.
Then, in the last two minutes—Wham! came an anvil. Urg! with the disgustingly overt symbolism. It felt as is someone just smeared gum on a lovely piece of art. To me, there are two things at the end that should have been edited out. It could have left the movie unmarred.
On the technical side, I found the consistent use of the no-top-or-bottom-margin frame to be distracting after a while. I very much appreciated the closed-in, claustrophobic effect it created. I just wish it wasn’t so noticeable all of the time. Not being a filmmaker, I wouldn’t know how to achieve that effect with that cause though.
Still, I don’t want to place too much emphasis on such a small percentage of the overall work. Tommy Lee Jones is amazing. The story is compelling. The storytelling and all the elements that go into storytelling are outstanding.
Within our current environment and state of political discourse, it just felt nice to experience and think about our current events in an intelligent way. And probably most of all—to be expected to think that way.