Post 9/11 films: A cinema of revenge

By Matthew E. Goldenberg
RAW STORY COLUMNIST

Even if one considers the fact that it wasn’t until a few years after the war in Vietnam concluded before any real cinematic testimonials to this event — “Apocalypse Now,” “The Deer Hunter,” etc. — were released, it’s difficult to overlook this simple fact: it’s been nearly three years since September 11th, and STILL no one in Hollywood is willing to speak up.

Aside from Michael Moore’s upcoming “Fahrenheit 9/11” — a film that lost its backing not once but twice as studio executives everywhere cowered — and “11'09"01,” the little seen collection of vignettes made by an international array of prestigious directors (including Ken Loach and Amos Gitai), mainstream cinema seems, frankly, too frightened to make a statement about what is perhaps the most politically and socially turbulent time in America’s history in thirty years.

That being the case, it still seems nearly impossible not to look at modern cinema through post-9/11 eyes. Few critics neglected to point out the newfound subtext of “Lord of the Rings,” “Black Hawk Down” and “Gangs of New York,” but those films started rolling before the phrase “let’s roll” had any special meaning.

Much more fascinating has been the strange influx of what might best be described as “revenge movies.” In a time when “an eye for an eye” is a more quoted Biblical passage than “turn the other cheek,” there can be no lack of importance to examining the underlying ideologies of these films.

Sean Penn stars in two of the more thoughtful revenge themed films: Clint Eastwood’s “Mystic River” and Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “21 Grams” (both Iñárritu and Penn contributed segments to “11'09"01”).

In “River,” violence and revenge is shown to be a never ending cycle: as a child, Dave (Tim Robbins) is raped; as an adult, he feels compelled to beat to death a man he witnesses receiving oral sex from a young boy. As a result, he is mistaken for the murderer of the daughter of his friend, Jimmy (Sean Penn). Jimmy, in turn, discovers it was the son of one of his previous victims, and not Dave, who shot his child — and finally, another cop pal Sean (Kevin Bacon), chillingly mimes shooting Jimmy — a not so subtle declaration that he will soon take his own revenge.

This could go and on and on if Eastwood didn’t choose to roll credits. It’s a powerful message that stays with you, and it’s one of the reasons why Eastwood’s film turned out to be one of Hollywood’s most rewarding last year. Eastwood is supposedly a devout Republican, but by populating his film with avowed celebrity liberals, he emphasizes the socio-political underpinnings of what might otherwise have been just a good murder mystery.

Jonathan Hensleigh’s “The Punisher,” by contrast, condones revenge as adamantly as “River” condemns it. Hensleigh crafts pornography for lovers of violence: the titular hero (Thomas Jane) watches his son, wife, mother, father, siblings, uncles, aunts, cousins, dog, gold fish, etc., get slaughtered before having to endure an emasculated justice system that fails to punish the evildoers.

Like Baby Bush ignoring the U.N.’s pleas for some level-headedness, The Punisher ignores the police and takes justice into his own hands, rationalizing and distancing himself from the suffering he will cause: “This isn’t vengeance,” he proclaims in voice over narration, “It’s punishment.” Hensleigh fails to take the Eastwood route of noting that Saint and Castle are actually mixed up in their very own never-ending cycle of revenge: the film opens with The Punisher, a cop, having an Amadou Diallo moment and shooting Saint’s unarmed son in a bust gone awry.

What does connect “River” and “Punisher” (or the nearly identical actioneers “Man on Fire” and “A Man Apart” — the former of which actually has our noble American hero doling out his punishment to corrupt “savages” in the third world) are their portrayal of what Jonathan Shay, M.D., Ph.D., writing in his book “Achilles in Vietnam,” calls the “berserk state” — a state of mind in which someone is so overcome with the need for revenge that he or she becomes “socially disconnected... enraged, cruel, without restraint... devoid of fear... inattentive to [his] own safety... indiscriminate [and] reckless.”

Shay was studying the connection between Achilles, the protagonist of Homer’s epic “Iliad,” and Vietnam vets with post-traumatic stress disorder. The state is actually best depicted in “A Man Apart,” in a scene when Vin Diesel’s bereaved “hero” is so anxious to kill his enemies that he looses all verbal skills and endangers the life of his partners, but it’s there, too, in the look of rage in Dave’s eyes as a beats a child molester in “River” and in the simultaneously homicidal and suicidal Punisher’s refusal to share his grief with those around him.

What all of these filmmakers understand, either inherently or intellectually, is the lack of logic inherent in the need for revenge. But Hensleigh romanticizes the berserk state, concluding that the blind rage that comes with it can be an invaluable tool for justice seekers. And while "berserkers," overflowing with anger and without regard for their own lives, often do, consequently, become, “unstoppable killing machines”— Shay notes that soldiers often wanted to be patrol with these men because it made them feel safe — Hensleigh (and filmmakers like him) implies that it’s okay to exploit the berserker’s need for revenge.

No film understand this exploitation better than “Troy” (based, of course, on the “Iliad” of which Shay writes). Poorly written, blandly directed, and horribly acted, “Troy” is, nonetheless, the most politically relevant movie released since last year’s invasion of Iraq. Director Wolfgang Petersen and screenwriter David Benioff expertly portray the manner in which tyrant king Agamemnon (Brain Cox) takes advantage of both his brother’s desire for revenge and Achilles’ berserk state for his own “nation building” purposes. The film ultimately does even “Mystic River” one better: it expands the dangers of revenge from the personal to the societal, from the irresponsibility of the Hensleighs to the insanity of the Bushes.