Sam Mendes speaks to Ali Jafar

Playing with fire--gladly

He never said, "too bad they didn't get it in the United States". For Sam Mendes, the British expatriate in Hollywood with already two widely-circulated American movies in his bag, his affair with Uncle Sam is strictly business. There is no whining, no blaming. Mendes came to the United States with a "European objectivity" to fashion movies that mirror the American experience, and he knew, from the outset, that not all Americans will be comfortable with what they see--not least because in some ways, they regard him as an outsider.

"Over there they think, 'we've put up with him talking about American suburbia, we've put up with him doing a gangster movie, do we really have to put up with him doing a war movie about the Middle East, as well?'" Mendes, in his humorous, casual and confident manner, eased into his chair as we met in London to talk about his latest work. A rueful smile found its way into his face. "In Europe they understood Jarhead. They understand it comes from the tradition of absurdist movies that deal with the futility of war, and has more in common with Beckett, Sartre and Buñuel. In the United States, it's like talking about a different movie." Some American viewers criticise Jarhead for failing to be like an Oliver Stone movie. Mendes' spasms of chuckles, not in the least condescending, showed however that this is a man who knows what he is up against, especially when he makes an adventurous foray into war movie territory, teases the genre and unnerves his audience.

Jarhead is a no-combat movie that does not glorify war or applaud the men who go to war. Drawing on the memoir of the same name by U.S. Marine Anthony Swofford, Mendes disobeys all the laws of American movies and produces a matter-of-fact First Gulf War testimony shorn of explosions but rife with endless waiting, uncertainty and disappointment, all true aspects of war that have frequently eluded the public's imagination. The sense of unease culminates in the final realisation that fundamentally, preparation for war amounts to nothing and justifies nothing. In the face of the current Second Gulf War, this is something the highly-strung Americans do not want to hear.

"I was very aware I was playing with fire." Mendes' self-assurance and clarity of purpose emphasised that Jarhead's message has always been provocative from the outset. "Here, men are being trained and pumped up for the ultimate state-of-the-art war, but are eventually denied it. When war does emerge, it runs ahead of them and they become its witnesses, its victims." The troopers "walked in and didn't have any of those things"--the mythic figure of Saddam Hussein, his stock of biochemical weaponry and immense army, and the huge casualties that the troops thought would await them. The irony remains pronounced, up to the very end--where troopers are convinced they will never have to return--and is multiplied by what the country is to do fifteen years later.

Jarhead shows a bleak situation and sends a grim message to audiences, who now need to confront war's futility and reassess the image of the "heroes" who become involved in an enterprise that eventually adds up to so little. "This is not a movie that can be used to pump up marines," Mendes declared plainly. With the lack of gunfire and explosions, audiences will be hard-pressed to revel in an adrenaline-charged experience. Instead they are to realise it is horrendous to want to become involved the first place. "There's a much more frightening question than asking why politicians want to go to war at a particular time. It's, what can you possibly get out of becoming a soldier and fighting in a war?"

Mendes takes the topic of war seriously. Jarhead makes allusions to other war movies and, in particular, shows the Marines watching clips from Apocalypse Now, whose original editor Walter Murch is also editor here. Mendes knows comparisons to the movies he draws on, like Full Metal Jacket among others, are inevitable, and points to how movie images contribute to the public's imagination of history in general. "Vietnam, for us, is not really Vietnam or documentaries about Vietnam. It's Coppala's Vietnam, Kubrick's Vietnam, Oliver Stones' Vietnam, Cimino's Vietnam. All you really have is movies. Even more so with World War II. Saving Private Ryan is World War II for a generation of young men." What Jarhead also has in common with the war movies it is compared with, is its function in raising questions, in provoking controversy.

Mendes' earlier American Beauty and Road to Perdition are constructed around predetermined storyboards, but with Jarhead, abandoning storyboard control and working with a new cinematographer, Roger Deakins (Conrad Hall was cinematographer for his previous movies), Mendes has taken a step in the improvisatory direction to fashion something more "organic and fluid". His mise-en-scène is however still down to earth. "It's like working with a play here. I told Roger, don't worry about the CGI." To a certain extent, this explains the sober, serious undertone of Jarhead, and its self-defined "not-a-crowd-pleaser" character.

Like the directors he admires--Roman Polanski, Milos Forman, Ang Lee--Mendes has come to terms with his relationship with the United States and deals confidently with American subject matters. Musing about his previous experience working in theatre and learning to adapt to the public eye, Mendes' expression revealed he is up for more: not only to match the public's demands, but to surprise and to challenge the public. Just like American Beauty bares the dark sides of American suburbia, Jarhead, possibly the first postmodern war movie, is an unsettling, unequivocal testimony to the present-day anxiety and even fatuity that characterise the 21st century American experience. I am convinced that Mendes' future output will continue to be, in significant ways, self-consciously reflective of the truth--regardless whether the very subjects of its critique will get it.