Stopgaps and 'Stop Loss': South by Southwest, Part 2

Aaron Hillis reports:

It's Saturday, my final day in Austin, and it's mildly embarrassing for me to be so backlogged with my write-ups when the SXSW vibe hasn't been about film for days. You see, from last Friday (the opening night brouhaha) through Tuesday night (which marks the awards ceremony; watch for my upcoming interview with actor-turned-filmmaker Mark Webber, whose directorial debut Explicit Ills picked up an Audience Award and a jury prize for its cinematography), it's all about le cinema. Then on Wednesday morning, the cloud of directors and bespectacled film nerds dissipates—or rather, expands triple-fold into a thicker fog of swaggering rockers. There are still screenings going on through today (I'll be checking out the Zellner brothers' missing-kitty comedy Goliath later this afternoon), but the majority of the industry types have skedaddled back to New York, L.A. and wherever else they came from, leaving me to play my favorite game: Who's a Band? If you spot a trio of twenty-something dudes with skinny jeans and asymmetrical haircuts, plus a pretty girl in brown boots and a brown handbag, that's a band. Only see two guys and the rock chick? Stick around a while, they're probably waiting for their fourth to park the car.

I wasn't at all surprised that the majestic Paramount Theater had a line around the block for Stop-Loss, "a love letter to Texas from Texas" as director Kimberly Peirce introduced it, her first film since 1999's Boys Don't Cry. But was this epically uneven, politically schizophrenic flick worth the wait? Ryan Phillippe plays a U.S. Army sergeant and decorated hero who—soon after returning to his small-town TX home from a tour in Iraq that still haunts his psyche—is "stop-lossed" by order of the President, a backdoor draft he vehemently disagrees with. Going AWOL and on the run with his buddy's fiancée (Abbie Cornish), a rather peculiar dynamic that hints at but never congeals into romance—Phillippe suffers PTSD flashbacks (war-movie cliché #3), beats up strangers, and contemplates escape across the border at the expense of deserting his family, friends and country. Like similar wartime misfires In the Valley of Elah and Redacted, soldier-made videos are a huge inspiration on the story as well as its aesthetics (at least until that idea is abandoned entirely), and you can practically hear Peirce clearing her throat to say Big Important Things about the meaning of patriotism through a tiny, soldier-experience drama (cliché #7). But from its opening sequences in Tikrit, including a balcony-rattling, tragic firefight involving Phillippe's foolhardy unit of good ol' boys—Channing Tatum as the face of meathead pride, Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the war-scarred alcoholic, and Victor Rasuk as the token minority with a poignant tale of woe, a/k/a cliché #11)—there's an uncomfortable sense that Peirce is trying to please everyone by taking a strangely ambiguous political stance. Setting up our hero as guilt-ridden for his part in a civilian casualty (cliché #26), what little anti-war critique there is gets trampled over by jingoistic Rambo porn, especially in an infuriating ending that attempts emotional hesitancy, but really just proclaims that people should suck it up and blindly obey the government rather than question controversial or flat-out immoral policies. USA! USA!

I'm going to keep this short and sweet so I don't miss Goliath, but along with the Mark Webber Q&A that I mentioned earlier, also be on the lookout here for interviews with Crawford director David Modigliani, Medicine for Melancholy director Barry Jenkins, Body of War co-directors Ellen Spiro and Phil Donahue (yes, that Phil Donahue), and all the way from Iceland, The Amazing Truth About Queen Raquela director Olaf de Fleur.

Comments

[oakling]

blarf! i'm surprised she pulled her punches like this after making Boys Don't Cry. Wonder why she can take such a clear stand on that story but dilly-dally so much on a subject where so many more people are in agreement with her....