Sam Mendes Q&A

The 'American Beauty' director discusses his controversial new war film, 'Jarhead'.

Jan 10 2006

Having already tackled two American cinematic institutions – suburbia ('American Beauty') and the gangster film ('Road to Perdition') – Sam Mendes takes on the American war movie with 'Jarhead'. All the more timely for its setting in the first Gulf War, the film sees the theatre director-turned-filmmaker attempt to make a war film without any explosions. Here, he talks about trying to find a way out of the desert and why Bruce Willis might just have the answer to peace in the Middle East.

How has the reaction to 'Jarhead' differed in Europe from America?

I feel they've understood it in Europe. In America, it's like talking about a different movie. Fundamentally, 'Jarhead' disobeys all the laws of American movies, and not just the political laws of American movies right now which demand on some level to tell us which side they're on. In Europe, there's a sense that this film comes from the tradition of absurdist war movies about the futility of conflict. It has more in common with Beckett, Sartre and Buñuel than it does with Oliver Stone. In America, they assumed I was trying to make an Oliver Stone movie and that I'd failed.

This is a war film without combat. What challenges did that pose?

I was very aware that I was playing with fire. What we were doing was the war equivalent of 'That Obscure Object of Desire', the Buñuel film where he never gets to sleep with the girl but she's always there. By the time you get to the end, you're in a fever of desire. I was aware that this movie, and the book, deals with men being trained and pumped up for the ultimate war, the state-of-the-art war, then denies them that. Even when it emerges, it runs ahead of them. They become witnesses to the war.
So the challenges were to make the incidentals the details and make the characters the story. The waiting and meditation on war becomes the heart of it. The film's an attempt to use the first Gulf War as a metaphor for the American experience in the Middle East over the last fifteen years, in the sense that there's this constant feeling that the war, the meaning of the war and the enemy is just out of reach. Nobody knows what they look like. Everything is over the crest of the next horizon: if we can just conquer Iraq, if we can just capture Saddam, if we can just put him on trial. But each time one door closes, another two open. This is a constantly unravelling situation but American audiences don't want to be told it could take decades. It's not interesting to them. They want to know you can walk into a bunker in the next couple of weeks and strangle Osama Bin Laden. Maybe Bruce Willis could do it.

There are clips of other war films on the television in 'Jarhead'. How wary were you of comparisons?

It's very difficult as a filmmaker to use other people's films and not beg comparison with all these great, classic war movies. There is a serious point being made, which is that our shared cultural experience of Vietnam now, for people like you or me, is not Vietnam or even documentaries about Vietnam. It's Coppola's Vietnam, Kubrick's Vietnam, Oliver Stone's Vietnam, Cimino's Vietnam. We still, somehow, feel we understand what Vietnam was about but if you really ask yourself, then you find that all you have is movies. Those were not real explosions. Even more so with World War II. It's 'Saving Private Ryan'. As many Brits said at the time, it was news to them that the Americans won World War II. For a generation of young men, World War II means 'Saving Private Ryan'.

People have called the first Gulf War the first postmodern war. Do you see yours as a postmodern war film?

I think it's one of the few war movies that can't be used to pump up the adrenalin of the Marines. Even though films like 'Apocalypse Now' are anti-war movies, the moment you introduce combat and explosions there's an element that's going to get people going. What I hope this movie achieves is to pose some questions as to why men continue to want to be soldiers, continue to want to test themselves. There is something else going on here. That's a much more frightening question than why do politicians continue to want to invade countries?

Your film's editor is Walter Murch, who edited 'Apocalypse Now'. What was it like watching him re-edit his own film in the scene when the Marines watch the Valkyries sequence? In 'Jarhead' the sequence seems more bellicose.

You're right – he chopped out the middle sequence. The more extreme the reaction of the men, the more the irony is available to you that they're cheering an anti-war movie. That was one of the scenes where I just said to him, 'I think I should let you cut this Walter.' I asked him how it felt and he told me it was like being trapped inside his own drawing. It was a little weird for him staring at this thing he'd first edited 25 years ago, and now he's editing people watching it but the way they would react is not the way he would react. It was a pleasure working with him.

'Jarhead' opens on January 13.

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