War & Life: Film Reviews of The Hurt Locker and Up in the Air

Tonight was the beginning of the Hollywood award season, and two of the movies that are up for a lot of nominations are The Hurt Locker and Up In The Air.  Both of these movies are united by the fact that they depict real life - the life of our generation that is shaped by wars and economic recession. And both movies don't shy away from showing the horrors of war and recession and the toll that these events take upon us mere humans.

The Hurt Locker takes place in Iraq, circa 2004.  It chronicles the lives of three soldiers who are part of an EOD (explosive ordinance disposal) team - a bomb disposal unit that is called in whenever the infantry encounters a situation in which there might be a possible IED (improvised explosive devices) nearby.  The film is both remarkable and horrific in how you actually feel as if you are in the midst of the situations that the EOD team encounters.  It is as terrible as Saving Private Ryan because as you are watching the movie, you also realize that this is real - this is an event that takes place every single day in the lives of the soldiers.  You watch these men put themselves in impossibly dangerous situations in which they are exposed in every possible way and in which every single person that they encounter could be a possible enemy - someone who wants to blow them up.

That is the scary, horrific part of the film - that the "enemy" is dressed in everyday plain clothes and hiding in buildings with doorways, using oil tankers and cellphones to detonate remote bombs to destroy both soldiers and civilians.  Even in the desert, hiding behind goats, rocks, hills.  Modern guerilla warfare is absolutely terrifying and impossible.  After watching the film it is unbelievable that any semblance of democracy and stability has actually occurred in Iraq.

What is even sadder is watching the scenes of the lead sergeant trying to fit back in at home.  After risking his life multiple times diffusing bombs, he stands in a grocery store cereal aisle dumbfounded and annoyed by all the choices available to him.  He can't fit back in to "life" - it holds no meaning to him anymore.  Even his family isn't enough to make him want to stay.  So he chooses to go back for another tour of duty.

The film is emotionally traumatizing and exposes you to the horrors and impossible difficulties that soldiers face daily in Iraq and Afghanistan. Friends are there one moment, gone the next.  Death is feared and yet unavoidable.  It breaks my heart to know that a whole generation of men and women are experiencing this reality every day.  It is no wonder that they come home with PTSD and find it impossible to live life in America - our mundane reality compared to the highly charged and literal explosive reality of war.

And yet that mundane reality is a difficult and hard road for many right now, as the movie Up in the Air illustrates.  The movie is about a man who's job is to go around to companies and fire people - the companies literally hire him to come and lay off their workers.  The main character, Ryan Bingham, travels all around the country, from city to city, airport to airport, priding himself on how well he does his job and extolling the virtue of his lack of relationships and the ease of his life because of it.  He goes around to hotel conference rooms giving "motivational" speeches talking about an empty backpack - a life free of the burden of relationships and obligations.

This was a hard movie for me to watch.  Having gone through multiple layoffs at my company, it brought back many hard and painful memories of people that I knew and loved being told they no longer had a job.  Even though many of my old coworkers have gone on and found better, more fulfilling jobs, there are still many that haven't.

The ending of the movie also depressed me.  Ryan achieves his main goal in life, and yet finds that it holds no meaning.  When he finally realize that he wants the burden and obligations of relationships, he is rejected and forced to realize that his life has had little meaning.  Standing all alone in an airport, he has no where to go and no one to go to.

In the end, I guess it serves as a reminder to hold on to the relationships that we have in our life, because they are the only things that matter and are real.  Everything else is just an illusion and living a detached life ends up in a meaningless goal, like the one that Ryan achieves.

Both movies are relevant to life in 2010 as they depict the realities that we live with today - one that is a distant reality to the majority of Americans, but for the few that are experiencing the horrors of war, a reality that the majority will never fully understand; and the other, a reality that at least 10% of the population is experiencing and living through, but hopefully are holding as hard and fast to the relationships that they do have to help them get through this time.  It's hard to really recommend either one of them and I don't if you like to escape reality when watching movies.  But if you want to experience a heavy dose of life in the first decade of the 2000s, then watch them.

Have you seen either one of these movies? What's your take? Agree, disagree? Would love to know! Please share your thoughts in the comments section!

Forgive Me...

This is my blog, my corner of the universe, and as such I am going to take a moment, be selfish and pat myself on the back for making so many correct predictions this past year. This is not humble of me and it will be showing a side of myself that I am acutely aware of and keep under wraps most of the time. But I can't help myself because it is kind of uncanny how many things I correctly called way back in January of this year (see this link for my original post).

1 - I was right on the economy. Fact is, being in the housing industry puts you on the forefront of what is actually happening in the American economy, and I could have told you back in August of 2006 that we were headed for troubled times. But the idiots in Washington put their heads in the sand and refused to say that the economy was in trouble - on the other hand, there was no other way for them to play it. It was a Catch 22 - if the government acknowledged that something was wrong in the economy, things would have collapsed a lot sooner than they did. It's all about politics and spin and if the spin is negative, the markets will come crashing down.

2 - I was right on the Democrats winning the White House. I must admit, I don't like it - I don't like having a Democrat in the White House. But McCain ran one of the poorest campaigns I have ever seen - what happened to him? I know he has the experience and the record and there is not a person who has served his country more faithfully than he has, but he became muzzled and the experienced statesman that he is never publicly showed itself. I also accurately called that he would have a chance if he picked Sarah Palin as his VP - she had a shining moment at her GOP convention speech, but was then quickly derailed by the media, late-night comedians, and herself. And I don't think he would have had a better shot if he had picked someone else as his Vice Presidential running mate. The public bought into Barack's message a long time ago and the Republican party shot itself in the foot with all of the corruption scandals and mishandling of the power they had. I think it is absolutely wonderful how many people turned out to vote in this election - that is amazing and incredible and right - too many men and women have sacrificed their lives to give us that right, and to not vote is to do them a dishonor and disrespect our own freedom and rights. BUT, I am just wondering how many people are going to be severely disappointed when all the changes promised don't happen. The Democrats will become drunk with their power, just like the Republicans did, and Washington will remain the way it has always been. THAT is politics and THAT is the reality of the political system that we live in. "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely".

3 - I happened to be totally right about the Giants winning the Super Bowl - which was a fluke guess, but still the correct one! Yay for the downfall of the Patriots :).

4 - I was correct about Into the Wild not winning the Best Picture, but I still maintain that it should have.

5 - I was also correct about the bright color trend continuing.

6 - I also correctly predicted that the writers strike would last into the Spring 2008 TV season, though thankfully it did end in time for new episodes of Lost to be aired - thank the Good Lord above!

7 - I am right about the troops not being pulled out of Iraq until at least 2010. Though Obama has promised a total immediate withdrawal, the reality of the situation will not allow this to be feasible until at least 2 years into his presidency.

8- Though, this prediction came just a week ago, I did correctly predict that gas prices would fall to $1.99 on the eve of the election (Karen G can back me up on this one!), and, guess what! They did! Anyone who tells me that the oil companies do not fix their prices and do not control the politics in Washington (dad) needs to then explain to me the coincidence of the dramatic drop in gas prices during the election. I mean seriously - $1.99 gas - when was the last time that we saw $1.99 gas!? 2005? I don't care that the "market" has all of the sudden seen such a dramatic slip in demand. You tell me that the market has seen a slip in demand when prices are back to $4 next summer. I don't see a slip in demand - there is still plenty of traffic on 66 and 495 and even around the little town of Warrenton - more traffic in fact! Maybe the bubble of Northern Virginia keeps me from seeing the decline in demand, but I just don't see it. No, the conspiracy theorist in me says that the politics of oil run SO much deeper than any of us really know, and that there is more going on behind the scene. And in fact, if the gas prices were to accurately reflect the price of oil on the market, I believe that the prices should be even lower than they are.

9 - I correctly predicted that I would be moving this year! I am really excited about this - I have been keeping it kind of under wraps, but I recently found out that I will be moving (still in Warrenton, back to where I originally started 2 years ago), but I will be living on my own, which will be something completely new and exciting. I have never lived completely on my own and I'm excited/nervous to see what this new arrangement has in store for me.

And finally, number 10 - I correctly predicted that our new business venture, Signature WoodCrafters would be successful. Being involved with this start-up has been one of the hardest things I have ever worked on. Every day is a battle for survival, which is capitalism at its core. I have always tried to work hard and do my best at whatever I'm given to do, but until the work itself is a day to day struggle for survival, I have found out that I didn't know what it truly meant to work hard. It is not easy and is a battle day in and day out. Though we will probably only break even this year with this venture, that is still a victory, because I don't know many start-ups that have turned a profit in their first year, considering the massive advertising costs needed to get your name into the market. BUT, as hard as it has been, I don't know if I would trade this year for anything else. It has been exciting, taxing, draining, thrilling, hard, and totally worth being involved in. It has helped saved the rest of my coworkers' jobs, has given our company a new source of revenue, and taught me a ton - I really couldn't ask for more. I am really lucky to have the opportunities that I have at my company.

So, I ask for all of my legions of readers (all 2 of you :)) to forgive me for applauding myself and bragging about making some correct predictions about this year. And the fact that I hedged all of my bets by originally predicting that none of my predictions would come true, should negate everything that I have congratulated myself on :). And I will return back to my humble self and say with all sincere humility that it is just luck that I gave an accurate read on this stuff. To truly test my clairvoyance, I will have to accurately predict social, political, and international trends for at least two years in a row. And then if that happens, I will proudly take on Professor Larry Sabato's recently relinquished mantle of the "most accurate political prognosticator" :).

Through the Looking Glass - What I think the Year 2008 will bring

There are many pundit shows out there that like to make predictions on the current year, and in light of that I wanted to try to make some predictions and see if they actually come true. I figure, why not?

1. The United States economy will enter into a recession.
Actually in terms of this prediction, I think we are already there - the economists just don't want to say that word. The housing market is not going to come back anytime soon - certainly not this year, and most likely not next year. Being in the housing market industry, we will be down 50% in revenues from just two years ago. It is absolutely incredible. We were setting records in terms of our revenues and to go so fast from such an economic boom to a bust has been kind of shocking. A lot of companies in our industry are going out of business now because they can't handle the pressure of the downturn.
The thing that is going to make the US economy go into a recession is the subprime meltdown that occurred this past August. CEOs of major credit companies are being ousted left and right over their failure to make sound financial decisions. The fallout from all of this is that now the job market is being effected. People are being laid off in the thousands, and with the jobs disappearing, the consumer will not be spending money. The fact that gas and energy prices are refusing to come down will also (and has) negatively effect the overall economy and consumer's spending power. The only thing that is keeping us afloat is that the consumer hasn't stopped spending yet. But I predict that that won't last much longer - or it will become much more difficult to pay the bills and spend money on big ticket items.

2. A Democrat will win the Presidential election, unless Mike Huckabee wins the Republican nomination.
The tide has turned in American politics. The scandals and abuse of power that runs rampant on Capitol Hill and in the White House has tired the American public. And the public associates that with just one political party and not politics itself. Honestly, if a Democrat wins the White House, I don't think that much will change in terms of American politics. There will always be abuse of power in the White House, because that is the precedent that has been set - not by Bush, but all the way back to Franklin Roosevelt - who changed the powers of the US Presidency because of the Great Depression. Ever since FDR, each American president has extended the powers of the Oval Office to fit his agenda. Whoever is newly elected will end up doing the same. Republicans and Democrats seem to be like the zebra - one is black with white stripes while the other is white with black stripes - basically, it's the same animal, any way that you look at it.
The only reason I give Mike Huckabee a chance is because he has Chuck Norris in his corner and he was a Baptist minister and I like the things that I've read about him. He seems very likeable.

3. US Troops won't begin to pull out of Iraq until 2010, at the least.
It is foolish to think that the Iraq War will be over anytime soon. From the moment that we invaded the country in 2002, I, a lowly foreign affairs student, knew that we would be in the region for at least a decade. The ethnic factions (and ethnic is probably not the right word) that are there - the Sunnis, the Shias, and the Kurds will all kill each other if we leave - which they do to an extent now. But I feel like if the troops pulled out it would turn into genocide. Trying to establish a democracy with these three factions is so stupid. What needs to happen is that the state of Iraq needs to be demised and changed into three separate countries. But there are two problems in doing that - one, is that if you create a Kurd state, you create a rallying point for the Kurds that reside in Turkey and cause them to rise up in rebellion against the Turks as they try to break off from Turkey and join the new Kurd state. The second is that if you create a Shia state, you give Iran a country to completely go after. They would try to annex that state into themselves, or at the least try to set up a puppet government that they could run. Iran has already tried to do this before, but funny enough, Saddam Hussein stopped that from happening.

4. Into the Wild won't win the Oscar for Best Picture - But it should!
This is the most underrated movie of the year - far better than Atonement. Atonement was actually kind of awful - there is nothing special about it.

5. The Writer's Guild of America will hold out and not settle with the studios in order to save the spring 2008 TV season. The Fall 2008 season might come to fruition, but even that might not happen.
Therefore bad reality shows will dominate the airwaves causing the American public to either lose all their brain cells or turn off their television sets to actually read!

6. The NY Giants will win the Super Bowl.
I actually don't believe this prediction at all - I think the Patriots will destroy the Giants - destroy them with a capital D! BUT I will root for the underdog nonetheless :).

7. Signature's new business venture, Signature WoodCrafters will take off and save lots of jobs at my company!
This prediction I completely believe in. I think there is a whole market out there that we have barely begun to tap and though there are some competitors out there, we can create a niche for ourselves and win! If you know anyone that wants to re-do their kitchen cabinets and countertops or change their carpet-grade stairs to hardwood, let me know!

8. The bright color trend will continue on through the spring and fall fashion seasons.
I love color - I love, love, love it. And I love bright colors. I think that this trend will continue because there are a lot of other people who feel the same that I do!

9. I will end up moving somewhere different.
I only think this because I have moved every year since graduating college. It would be nice to settle down somewhere, but I don't see the reality of that happening anytime soon. But we'll see.

10. None of these will come true.
This is so I hedge all my bets :).