Memorial Day Viewing
When I go home, people ask me: ‘Hey Hoot…why d’ya do it, man? Why? You some kinda war junkie?’ I won’t say a goddamn word. Why? They won’t understand. They won’t understand why we do it. They won’t understand it’s about the men next to you. That’s it. That’s all it is.
–Hoot, Black Hawk Down
While speaking to my dad–an Air Force vet–before the weekend, he told me to take a minute to remember what this weekend is all about. I said “yeah, sure” in an off-handed fashion, puzzled at first at what he meant, realizing a few seconds later this Monday was Memorial Day, and feeling embarrassed about my stupidity. Not really knowing what else to do, and having just bought the extended cut of Black Hawk Down from Borders, I popped it into the DVD player.
Ridley Scott’s adaptation of Mark Bowden’s book is the single greatest war film ever made. I realize that’s a bold statement, but I don’t make too many like it–in fact, I probably wouldn’t make it about any other genre.* The action scenes are unparalleled, though Saving Private Ryan comes pretty close, but the key to the film is that quote from Eric Bana’s Delta Force member, Hoot.
And I realize that it’s kind of a cliché for a character to say “hey, I don’t do it for the glory, I do it for my buddies.” And it’s even worse for me to sit here as a civilian and say that he’s right–after all, what do I know? But what Black Hawk Down does is show civilians like myself what that camaraderie means in a way that no other film does. No other film even approaches it. The chaos of close-quarters street fighting and the difficulty of defending a friend; the Delta dudes dropping in to protect fellow soldiers from capture even though it’s probably futile and almost certainly a death sentence; the heart-wrenching field surgery and its ultimate failure–these little vignettes add up to an impossibly great whole, and grant us, the viewer, a deeper knowledge of life on the front than we have any right to.
Black Hawk Down is arguably an anti-war film–it does, after all, spend most of its two and a half hours focusing on the horrors of conflict–but it’s virulently pro-American. By laying out the devastation of the Somali countryside and the genocide taking place within its borders in the opening scene, Scott gives the Americans ample cover for both being in-country and engaging in the mission as they did. The soldiers and marines shown are nothing if not heroic and selfless, and cautious of civilian life to a fault; the very definition of the best our nation has to offer. Whereas troops typically get portrayed as war-criminals, if at all, these men are bona fide heroes. The U.N. blue helmets, meanwhile, come across as feckless, and callow, while the Somalis are little better than wild animals–no noble enemy for the audience to side with here.
Ridley Scott is probably the greatest director working today–though uneven (see: A Good Year and Kingdom of Heaven), he has turned out classics in the genres of war, horror (Alien), science fiction (Blade Runner), and historical epic (Gladiator). That sort of versatility is amazing, and the skill he brings to Black Hawk Down is undeniable. Close-quarters fighting has never been done that well on the sort of scale he was working on, and likely won’t be again. Black Hawk Down is an important film, and should be required viewing for anyone who cares about the military or great movie-making.
*The only possible exception: The Godfather and mobster movies. But even then, I’m not sure if that or its first sequel is the superior film. Goodfellas also gives The Godfather a run for its money.