Jean Renoir and Improvisation

I love to read quotes from artists about their working methods. Jean Renoir, the french film director, offers a great description of improvisation:

"I'm a bit like a man who is in love with a woman and who goes to see her with a bouquet of flowers in hand. In the street he goes over the speech he is going to make; he writes a brilliant speech, with many comparisons, talking about her eyes, her voice, her beauty, and he prides himself in all this, of course. And then he arrives at the woman's house, hands her the bouquet of flowers, and says something completely different. But having prepared the speech does help a little."

Renoir prepared tirelessly, but he also opened himself up to improvisation. His films, as a result, have an air of spontaneity and playfulness. His best characters are also improvisers; they act out in theatrical ways, bending and shaping themselves.

In "Grand Illusion," Boeldieu, a prisoner of war, sacrifices himself, allowing his fellow prisoners to escape. His sacrificial act becomes an improvisational performance. He puts on white gloves, as if he was a dignified butler in a play. Renoir, moreover, injects moments of artificiality, transforming the prison camp into an imaginative stage. While Boeldieu distracts the German guards, Renoir uses a non-diegetic score; and the guards’ searchlights resemble stage lights. Renoir’s directing highlights the theatricality of the moment, while transforming Boeldieu’s actions into creative gestures that help him play the role of a selfless hero.

The Valley of Ellah

“The Valley of Elah,” directed by Paul Haggis, focuses on Hank (Tommy Lee Jones), a former military investigator, as he searches for Mike (Jonathon Tucker), his youngest son, who is AWOL from his military base. The police soon find pieces of Mike’s dead body—burned and stabbed—on military property. The narrative swerves in multiple directions, as Hank and Emily (Charlize Theron), a local police detective, follow false leads. Did drug dealers kill Mike? Did bar patrons kill him? Or did his friends kill him? As the mystery unfolds, the bureaucratic authority of both the military and the police are called into question: the indifferent police are happy because the body is outside their jurisdiction and the furtive military are relieved because the investigation is in their control.

Haggis tries to be both politically and socially conscious. To his credit, he avoids soapbox commentary, by keeping the war in the background. War reports from unseen televisions and radios resonate, as characters go about their everyday lives. The town residents, in effect, are construed as a half-engaged society: life at home carries on, while life overseas becomes increasingly violent. The police, in another scene, ignore a young wife whose husband, a recently returned soldier, murdered their dog. The police department’s indifference, unfortunately, leads to a future tragedy.

Haggis uses the biblical story of David and Goliath—referenced in the film’s title—as a moral lynchpin. David (Devin Brochu), Emily’s young son, hears the story twice; it’s first told by Hank and then by Emily. When Hank tells the story, the underdog’s valiant fight against Goliath amazes young David. But when Emily tells the story, David questions Saul’s rationale: Why would Saul allow a young boy to fight? His response, of course, is the moral question that Haggis wants viewers to ask: Why are we sending our young boys to fight in Iraq?

Haggis, in this respect, takes a familiar myth and reexamines its ideology. Many people, like Hank, interpret the myth as an example of courage. Haggis questions this rhetoric, by examining the story’s social implications. Joan (Susan Sarandon), Hank’s wife, briefly hints at Mike’s motivation for joining the army, in a phone conversation with Hank. She refutes Hank’s claim that enlisting was Mike’s decision, blaming it instead on Mike’s insecurity about being a “man” in a military household. Joan’s dialogue, despite its brevity, is not dubious. The equation of masculinity with courage is infused in our culture— especially films— but often it goes unnoticed.

If this seems far-fetched, just compare “Elah” to another recent film, “3:10 to Yuma,” directed by James Mangold. In “Yuma,” Dan (Christian Bale) helps transport a dangerous prisoner (Russell Crowe) for a railroad company. No matter how dangerous the mission gets, Dan carries on, despite putting his family at risk. His motive, however, is finally revealed at the end of the film: his recent bravery is an attempt to atone for past cowardice. By withholding this information—or by revealing it at all—Mangold, by effect, equates morality to bravery. Dan’s redemption, albeit violent, is seen as morally good.

Haggis fortunately avoids this. While Mangold appropriates the traditional western’s bravado, Haggis questions King Saul’s rationale; or more specifically, he examines the negative cultural ramifications of the biblical story. The military, we learn, played a central role in the Deerfield family: both of Hank’s sons served and died in the line of duty. Haggis, by including this information, transforms the biblical story into an exploration of guilt. Throughout the film, we hear snippets of a conversation—while Hank sleeps— between him and his son. At first, we hear the voice without a context of time or of place. Haggis, as the film progresses, reveals more and more of the conversation. Mike, we finally learn, cried to his father to get him out of Iraq.

This revelation works on two levels. First, it places Hank in a position of guilt and of responsibility. Secondly, it raises another question— what caused Mike’s breakdown? The solution to this mystery is Hank’s burden. In the beginning of the film, he steals his son’s cell-phone at the barracks and pays to get the corrupted video files removed from the phone. The images—shot during Mike’s tour of duty—contain digital artifacts. Hank tries to piece together these distorted images for clues about his son’s death.

The narrative, at this point, is expanded into two levels: First, there is the mystery that surrounds the murder itself and, secondly, the mystery that surrounds the events in Iraq. The images—both video and photographs—contain the answer to both. In one muddy video, it looks like soldiers are abusing a prisoner, which is eventually validated: Mike and his friends tortured a prisoner. Another shocking moment, the film’s most powerful scene, is the murder confession, in which Mike’s murderer coldly recounts the brutal events without any affect.

These shocking moments, however, are actually lessened by the limitations of the mystery genre that Haggis cultivates. The mystery, by definition, warrants a solution. So when the two stories diverge—the Iraq incident and the murder— they become connected as cause and effect. Unfortunately, despite Haggis’s best efforts, this seems like simple psychology. The war changed Mike and his friends.

This is not to say that this is implausible. War is an atrocious force when it comes to human psychology. It erodes morality. And this loss of moral identity becomes unbearable. Haggis makes this perfectly clear. But, in the end, the genre’s limitations stifle him because he fails to reconcile his dual intentions. He tries to have the best of both worlds; he wants the narrative intrigue afforded by the mystery and wants the social awareness provided by the subject matter.

In the end, all that remains is a message-laden attempt at social consciousness that is as obvious as the symbolic, upside down flag seen in the last shot of the film: America is in distress.