Directed by: Jason Hall
Starring: Miles Teller, Haley Bennett, Beulah Koale, Scott Haze, Joe Cole, Amy Schumer, Omar J. Dorsey
The title "Thank You for Your Service" is not a thank you at all, but an ironic, hollow statement. The soldiers in the film, Sgt. Adam Schumann (Teller), Specialist Tausolo Aieti (Koale), and PFC Will Waller (Cole), come home from tours in Iraq and are forced to deal with the rest of their lives. Each suffers from PTSD, with varying degrees of depression, rage, anger, sleeplessness, inability to connect with people, and turning to drugs for relief. Tausolo (or Solo) has memory loss so bad he can't remember if today is Wednesday or Thursday. They seek help, only to battle an unsympathetic bureaucratic machine that couldn't care less about what happened to them in Iraq. They are no longer of use to the military, so lotsa luck fellas.
Thank You for Your Service is an angry film with riveting portrayals and situations that feel real. What happens to the former soldiers is intense, dramatic, and feels authentic. There is no military glorification here. No fetishistic patriotism either. The movie doesn't seek to inspire the next Chris Kyle, but instead deals humanely with those soldiers who don't get to have films made about them (although this film is based on true events). What happened to Adam, Solo, and Will has likely happened to millions of other soldiers, and not just in the United States.
Adam comes home and pretends all is well, but we see how out of touch he is when he makes chocolate chip pancakes for his daughter and she tells him she doesn't like chocolate. His wife Saskia (Bennett) sees through the facade when he sits quietly while they watch a race at the speedway. She wants him to open up, which he is reluctant to do. Adam tries to go on with life as if things were normal, but after a terrifying late night hunting expedition with Solo, he realizes he isn't right. There are reasons why, which the story takes its time developing. Will returns home to find his wife left him, cleaned out his house, and took his daughter. He terrifyingly deals with this news.
Solo wants to be deployed again, probably because the Army is the only place in which he ever felt comfortable or necessary. The Army, due to his head trauma and symptoms, does not want him redeployed. He turns to drugs and falls in with a ruthless drug dealer (Dorsey), an Operation Desert Storm veteran who cruelly takes advantage of Solo's need. The film's performances are all real and engaging, and we feel everyone's pain from the inside out. The former soldiers want only to feel as useful as they did in Iraq, but instead they are left as shells of their former selves. The scenes in which Adam and Solo wait endlessly for help as the red digital counter slowly moves upward are enraging. One telling point is when Adam's former commanding officer sees him waiting in line for help and chastises him for being weak, saying something about morale, as if the others truly care. As Adam says, "He didn't fight our war. He fought the war from behind a computer,"
Thank You for Your Service truthfully understands how soldiers continue to be chewed up and spit out by a society they thought they were protecting. Our nation has become too obsessed with the symbolism of the military and not the actual people in it. Some people profess love for the military that borders on fetishism and call themselves patriotic. But, how patriotic is it when soldiers come home after all of the hoopla subsides and are left with few alternatives to deal with their experience? People love it when a uniformed soldier shows up at a football game and his reunion with his family is captured on camera. But, does anyone care what happens when the cameras are turned off? In a time when kneeling during the national anthem is treated like a capital offense while the pregame ceremonies before sporting events play like recruitment ads for the military, Thank You for Your Service is a welcome and needed antidote to the false "patriotism" people profess. Is allowing soldiers to suffer and make them jump through hoops for basic psychiatric help patriotic? Or does patriotism only extend to how much life and energy we can squeeze out of a person while he or she is overseas fighting battles started by his or her government? After that, it seems they are on their own.
No comments:
Post a Comment