War at Home, War Within

In the Valley of Elah

Dir: Paul Haggis, 2007

Understated, but ultimately heavy.

Former military investigator Hank Deerfield (Tommy Lee Jones) searches for his missing son, who's just returned from a tour in Iraq and hasn't been seen on the base in days. He uncovers more than just the details of the disappearance, as he looks through cell phone videos his son shot during the war. While Deerfield gets some help from underestimated detective and single mom Emily Sanders (Charlize Theron), his true search — through his son's life and his own ideas about war and the military — is ultimately a solitary one.

The first thing I have to say about this movie is that Tommy Lee Jones is absolutely brilliant. While the story itself is nightmarish and compelling, and all the other actors do a wonderful job, Jones makes the movie more than anything or anyone else in it. Deerfield is a strong, regimented, old-school military gentleman who's trying to make sense of a series of devastating blows to what he thought he knew. Jones doesn't make him brash or especially macho, although there is a bit of maverick left in him. Mostly, though, he plays him haggard, worn down by the years and the emotions he doesn't quite know how to express, by all the ways the world's outgrown. He is a middle aged man experiencing not only loss, but growing pains and disillusionment.

In the Valley of Elah, based on a true story penned by The Hurt Locker screenwriter Mark Boal, is also about the way we fight wars today and what that does to us. It examines the difficult transition from combat zone to stateside base, what PTSD does to soldiers and what it means for everyone else. It steers clear of sweeping statements until the very end (hey, it's still a Paul Haggis film.).

This movie slowly drained me, although I didn't cry much. It was not a tear-jerker, so much as a weight that got progressively heavier over the course of two hours, of which I was only aware when it was over. It piled everything on me, but offered no true resolution. No real satisfaction in busting the bad guys, not even clear cut bad guys to hate or good guys to root for. Just a lot of pain and human ugliness. Life goes on, we do what we gotta, we bandage what won't ever really heal.

Don't get me wrong, this is a worthwhile watch, even if it does make you feel like crap. I'll even say there's a strange, heartbreaking beauty to it. It's the way Deerfield puts his shoes next to his motel bed every night, the way he tells Sanders's young son the David and Goliath story, the way he shares a cigarette or liquor in a paper cup with his son's comrades.  It's in the un-talkiness of it, the under-scriptyness, the way it's understood that nothing said is going to make what's happened any better.