War horse
When you have a subject matter that no one
else wants to touch, Paul Haggis is your man. In fact that's what
he actively goes in search of. To date, he's tackled race and
intolerance in America (Crash) and female boxing and
euthanasia (Million Dollar Baby). When he started to
think about his next project he said to his agency, "go through
everything you have, books, novels, magazines. And when you find
something that you know will never get made in 100 years bring
it to me." They brought him an article about a father searching
for his missing son, by Mark Boal; a reporter who had been in
Iraq. Gaynor Flynn sat down with the director at the
Venice Film Festival and here's what he had to say.
Towards
the end of the film, when they talk about what actually happened
that night, are we actually supposed to know why they did what
they did?
There is no reason. When you talk to these boys,
they're the sweetest boys in the world, they have no idea. They're
not talking and there's great debate about what happened over
there, which is why I wanted to fictionalise this because in the
true story we don't know. We know the events. And that's why we
say based on actual events because who knows the true story. We
know what the police say, what the coroner said what they confessed
to, but who knows what is true, they went to the strip club, the
Chicken Shack that's what happened.
This film is more about the human consequences
of the war rather than the actual war. Was that your intent?
I wanted to start out with a murder mystery and
it turned into a moral mystery. I wanted to go from who killed
him to who's responsible and therefore widen the responsibility,
because its probably fair to say that we're responsible in America
at least. I mean I feel responsible.
Why?
Because its my government, these are things being
done in my name, these soldiers are there in my name, yes I was
against fighting in Iraq, and yes you would see me picketing against
the war but these men are there in my name and they're suffering.
Their pain is being caused by the things they can't face these
terrible, terrible stories that they're telling me. And I talked
to so many marines, many soldiers coming back from the war and
the things they're dealing with are things we will never have
to deal with hopefully. And so their stories are stories that
will haunt me for ever.
What sort of change will that bring to America
do you think?
The Pentagon's own figures are that one sixth of
all men serving have post traumatic stress syndrome. Now the pentagon
isn't one to overstate. So they're saying one sixth, well by my
figures 1.5 million troops have served in Iraq what is that 100,000
people? But now the Pentagon is changing figures and now they're
saying its 52,000 people who have post traumatic stress. Only
52,000 men? The VA says 250,000 have come to seek help and most
of them have been turned away.
I had an interesting experience, I talked to a
lot of veterans. I went online and read a lot of the stories saw
a lot of things they were shooting over there and I finally found
this story in Playboy that was really disturbing. I sat down with
so many guys who told me their stories and I was overwhelmed.
And so now I know why people don't want to listen to these stories,
they're horrible. The decisions we're asking these men and women
to make hour by hour are unthinkable, and we're also asking them
to do this while we don't want to see any images ourselves. We
don't want to see the kids being blown up. Our troops see this
every day but we don't want to see this because it would be too
shocking for the American public, so lets not put this on the
news media. Bullshit. If our soldiers are facing this we should
have to face it everyday too.
Why?
We
should have to look at these things and then we can decide and
that's what I wanted to do with this film. Agree with the war,
disagree with the war its not important to me. What is important
to me is that we know what is happening. If we face the truth
then we can yes its worth it or no its not. You said you started
out to make a murder mystery and it became a moral myetery. But
the moral mystery in this is it the morality of sending young
men out to iraq and not helping them when they come back?
Its one of the moral dilemma's we face isn't it.
I mean that's why its called In the Valley of Elah because
I thought of the story of David and Goliath. I thought of no better
story that typified bravery, it typifies what our soliders are.
They're very brave these men and women. To step foot on that sand
is a much braver act than most people done. And here's David he
comes, not much older than my son and he's delivering bread and
he comes into the army camp and they've been there for 40 days
and 40 nights and none of the king's bravest or strongest and
best armed and best prepared soldiers will go out and fight this
giant. The kid says I'll do it, the king says okay and he dresses
him in the armour and the armour is so big it falls off him. So
he goes out there with no armour and five smooth stones. Can you
imagine, I think this is a true soldier and the giant charged
and he stood his ground. He didn't run. How brave is that and
he waited until the guy got close enough and hit him in the skull
and killed him. Wow. But I asked myself after thinking about that
I said hold on, it's amazing but what kind of a king sends a boy
into the valley to fight a giant that your bravest men won't fight.
How morally corrupt is it for a king to send a boy out there.
Then I think something even more disturbing because I know something
about history. Being a story teller you know about history and
you know that in history books we tell the stories that we look
good and David and Goliath makes us look good its one of the best.
And its like hold on they were camped there for 40 days. I wonder
how many boys the king sent into the valley before that that we'll
never hear about because they didn't win and their bones are still
in the valley of Elah.
But is it also about the morality of war?
Of course. This is what these soldiers are saying.
It's a war where you don't know whose the enemy and whose not
and you've got lots of civilians in between and who do you think
is going to get killed? It ain't just the bad guys. If you're
going to kill the bad guys you're going to kill a lot of civilians
in between from your gunfire, from their gunfire, and you're not
meaning to. No one goes there to kill civilians. You go there
to do the right thing ,but many civilians are dying and the photographs
I saw haunted me and they should be haunting every American. Every
day we should be seeing them but we don't. The media is not putting
them on. If our boys are facing it we should have to face it.
Yet you don't accuse the government in the
film. Why?
Here's
what I wanted to do I wanted to tell a story that was not a Republican
story. This is not Democratic story. This is a story of our shared
responsibility, whether I f ought against the war or whether I
agreed with the war that doesn't matter right now, set that aside.
Lets talk about the truth of what's happening and if we can deal
with that then maybe we can deal with the rest of it. Did working
on the Clint Eastwood film impact on this film?
Well I never thought I'd do one more film let alone
three. I mean talking about Flags of Our Fathers I really
tried to tell a story that these are boys fighting. These are
boys over there and that was what the final imagery was. These
are not heroes these are men who did incredibly heroic things
but they were just kids, trying to get through the day. Letters
from Iwo Jima I was trying to tell the story from the enemy's
point of view. You know what there are just people on that side.
These are people we vilified and called Japs we didn't have to
think about them, they were Japs and therefore we could kill them.
And we've sort of being doing that here ,and there's so many things
I didn't put into this film that happened in our military. For
example, our young men are desensitised from the beginning so
they can just kill. And they're taught chanting songs and about
killing babies and stuff, ask them what they sing when they go
into battle. It's really disturbing.
When did you start this film?
I started in 2003. I started writing it in 2004.
I remember those are the times when 80% approval rating with our
president and everyone was riding around with stickers on their
cars and flags saying support our troops which was just another
way of saying support the war. And we were called traitors and
that we supported Al Qaeda for even questioning what our president
was doing there. So it was not a popular time but when somebody
tells you not to think about something its sort of sticks in your
head and you think about it. But I really wanted to take a story
that was framed as a murder mystery that people could say, oh
this is a good piece of entertainment that made them think, that
made them ask tough questions. If they could ask questions about
this, maybe they could ask questions about other things.
Gaynor Flynn
