A friend recently gave me some unnerving news. He told me, without batting an eye, I am the most sentimental person he knows. Shocked, I told several friends his impossible statement and each of them nodded quickly and rolled their eyes at my obliviousness.
How is this possible?
Admittedly I have stood in the street crying over a squirrel recently run down by a car, while a companion squirrel darted between cars to investigate his fallen partner, but what kind of cold-hearted stoic just shrugs at tragic roadkill? With time I reassured myself my friends were only remembering a few impassioned episodes most others were too shy to exhibit in public.
And then I watched a comedy film, alone in a nearly empty theater, and discovered true meaning beneath the slapstick and snarky humor of a movie sold to the world as a rip-roaring escape from the stress of contemporary life. “The Men Who Stare at Goats”, starring Ewan McGregor and George Clooney, is based on the book of the same title written by reporter and documentary film maker Jon Ronson. According to Ronson, the movie is adapted from the true accounts of his experiences covering the First Earth Battalion, a U.S. military unit pursuing experimental tactics using psychic and telekinetic abilities for success in conflicts.
In the film Bob Wilton, played by Ewan McGregor, is a staff writer for a local newspaper who is lost in depression and apathy after his wife leaves him for his domineering managing editor. Desperate to make a change and add a semblance of greatness to a mundane life, Wilton heads to the Middle East to cover the war in Iraq. With no assignment from a publisher and no contacts in the military theater, Wilton is left idle in Saudi Arabia inventing stories of adventure for his ex-wife back home. Fate or luck introduces Wilton to Lyn Cassady, played by George Clooney, who claims to be a “Jedi Warrior” trained for years in psychic warfare as part of the New Earth Army. The NEA led by Bill Django, an exceptionally zany Jeff Bridges, who discovered the new path for military training after years of immersion with love-fests and drug binges.
The film is clever, witty, hilarious and smart. Every comedy fan looking for a good laugh will get their money’s worth at the cinema. But as the recently appointed Most Sentimental Person You Know, I alternated between cracking up and wiping wispy tears from my eyes because something really meaningful is also inured in the story.
Wilton, Cassady, Django and virtually every character shares a single trait in the film. Each is searching for meaning in his life, and a reason to give his life value. Wilton is looking for a story to make him a great reporter. Cassady, after his release from the army, is living in the past dreaming a time he was admired and respected. Django has become nearly catatonic with drugs and alcohol after watching his dream of peaceful resolution to military conflict crumble. Every character is looking for something to believe in when materialism and avarice are the new standards of the contemporary era.
What an appropriate movie for a nation approaching its ninth year of military conflict around the world. Django greets the new recruits with a simple mission statement.
“You have to dream of a new America, an America that no longer has an exploitative view of natural resources, no longer promotes consumption at all costs,” Django says. A mission statement that hits home even more today.
If my tears seemed a bit over-sentimental, I was reassured by Jon Ronson himself when I listened to an interview on All Things Considered on NPR. Ronson said he enjoyed the movie and was pleased with the adaptation of his work, though acknowledged it was a bit different. “My book is very funny in the first half and then takes this dark lurch in tone,” Ronson said. The screenplay was lifted from the more humorous side, but a hint of the darkness may have left a mark.
As a culture, we have watched fighting and killing and death in two nations perpetuated in our name. We are tired. The news, the updates, the figures of trillions of dollars and thousands of fighters heaped on foreign soil with barely a glimmer of hope left to us. I am tired. I want all of it to mean something when all is said and done. I want what Wilton and Cassady found while they cradled a baby goat. And of course, I want a good laugh at the movies for a snide little respite from my hard and incredible reality. Then again, maybe I’m just sentimental.
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