First review from my class: In the Valley of Elah

Our first reviews for my film class could be no more than 500 words. The length of our writing became shorter over time (as you'll see). Now, I'm not as sure I can write effectively at a wordier length!

No one could have played retired Army sergeant Hank Deerfield except Tommy Lee Jones. As a determined Southern father looking for his supposedly AWOL son on the other side of the country, Jones gives us an unflinching look at the effects of battle in writer/director Paul Haggis’ Iraq war drama In the Valley of Elah. Hank could have been any number of clichés - emotionless cypher, gung-ho military man, bellowing father - but instead Jones takes parts of all these personas to create a complicated, multifaceted, real man.

Yes, Elah is a war movie, but it’s not as much about the battle on the ground as the battle at home: what is correct versus what is right in the search for the truth. Jones, along with co-stars Charlize Theron and Susan Sarandon, helps Elah overcome its potential slide into heavy-handed politics and elevates the film to the raw, devastating drama it is.

The overly coincidental storylines in his prior effort, race-relations polemic Crash, gave Haggis too much room to proselytize, and despite Elah's simpler framework, he still has a tendency to paint broadly. As devastating and real as posttraumatic stress is, Haggis seems to suggest every one of our soldiers has an anger complex, a drug problem, and/or a desire to cover up the truth. The use of music can be too manipulative, as if composer Mark Isham studied a book of patriotic songs to produce the string-heavy score.

But then we have the gruff, austere Jones. The actor’s aged face somehow becomes even craggier as his character uncovers lies and misinformation. In the uncomfortable interrogation scene when Hank learns exactly what happened to his son Mike, the lines on Jones’ face seem to grow deeper, and for the first time, the ex-military man isn’t sitting straight up. It’s as if he no longer can find it in himself to feel.

Theron is best known for her work in Monster and North Country, where the backstories of transformation overshadowed that she actually can act. But in Elah, Theron, playing the local detective and single mother reluctantly helping Hank, makes an ordinary, relatable woman memorable with equal parts strength and vulnerability. And although her onscreen time is limited, Sarandon gives a quietly heartbreaking performance as Hank‘s wife, Joan. Through the Deerfields, Haggis presents a real marriage, complete with the silences and unfinished thoughts that mark a three-decade union. When Joan, who previously lost one son to a military accident, learns of Mike’s death, she moans to her husband, “Couldn’t you have left me with one?” It’s a line delivered not with hystrionics but with unfathomable grief.

Elah haunted and shook me, but I didn’t weep as some fifty-something patrons around me did. Perhaps to feel the movie at its core, one must be a parent or old enough to see how, with the Iraq war, America seems to be repeating its mistakes.