Hoo-Rah
Jarhead gets comparisons to various of the post-Vietnam antiwar movies, but most of them are too literal and so undeserved. It is an antiwar movie of its own generation. As the narrator says, every war is different. That doesn’t mean they aren’t the same, however, as is also noted. And the same is true of the films made. Jarhead is a much different movie from Three Kings or that one with Meg Ryan, Courage Under Fire, as it is from the most often (and probably most accurately, if anything can be) citied Full Metal Jacket.

Leave all that aside.

Jarhead is not just an antiwar movie. It reveals much more than the cost of war, which it does well. It reveals the anachronism of military culture, focusing on the Marines, perhaps the most anachronistic of the branches of the armed services, and in so many different ways, not least being the ground-troop focus in an era that relies so heavily on air power and the mechanized forces, but also the burdens of machismo so ingrained through the indoctrination – more psychological warfare than anything else, really, and something the Marine Corps uses to very successfully create a culture of separation from the rest of the armed forces and the society they were formed to protect – and that of being a trained warrior who never gets to exercise his skills. The latter condition remains, of course, the most poignant element of the film’s examination of military service, since everyone, eventually, must retire, resign, or otherwise find themselves separated from the unit, that operative word being of great significance. And while there is the “free speech” and “war for oil” argumentation, that’s not what the movie’s about, even in light of the current situation in Iraq, not discounting those issues. Iraq War I or Iraq War II or Vietnam or any other conflict of any size or duration, the culture of war is what’s at issue and what ends up being both the most frightening and saddest problem servicemen and women and our civilization must learn from but never seems to.

We’ll face these problems again, as the troops come home, when the war ends, and the next war ends, and the one after that. And the worst of it will be borne by the soldiers, the ones who join because they don’t know what else to do, the ones who join because they believe in what they’re going to be asked to do, the ones who join because joining is the only option they’ve got or can conceive of or just need to feel like a real person.

It’s a very affecting movie and deserves to be seen. Go see it.