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Thread: Oren Moverman: The Messenger (2009)

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    Oren Moverman: The Messenger (2009)


    WOODY HARRELSON AND BEN FOSTER GOING TO WORK IN THE MESSENGER

    Oren Moverman: The Messenger (2009)

    Review by Chris Knipp

    [Also published on Cinescene..]

    A well-acted movie about men whose job is to tell people their loved one has been killed in Iraq. A character study derailed by a non-starter romance, THE MESSENER dramatizes the military's desperate need for routine -- and for an escape from it. Not the year's great Iraq war movie -- Bigelow's The Hurt Locker is that -- but a promising directorial debut for Moverman.

    Don't blame the messenger. But we do. In a key speech, one of the protagonists points out that people don't like being reminded how horrible war is. Or that people die in it. Delivering such news is the job of Captain Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson): informing, in Army jargon, the "N.O.K." (next of kin) that their loved one has just perished in Iraq. The movie's job in turn, I suppose, is to tell us how many lives war, or the latest one, wrecks. But this is, alas, likely to be another Iraq movie nobody will want to watch. The Messenger is so downbeat and its action is stuck in so deep a rut that it never quite sings or emerges from its narrow context. Nonetheless the details are interesting, the feel is authentic, and the acting is excellent.

    As The Messenger begins, the captain is joined by Staff Sergeant Will Montgomery (played by Ben Foster, who shone in Alpha Dog and 3:10 to Yuma) -- a young man who has just recovered, physically anyway, from an explosive encounter in Baghdad that got a lot of his squad killed and gained him a medal. He's come back to find that his girlfriend (Jena Malone) is marrying somebody else. When he tries to relate to people, he tends to implode. Now he's assigned to spend his last three months of active duty with the captain, a shakily recovering alcoholic, who explains the rules and procedures of the difficult job of being (in the government euphemism) a Casualty Notification Officer, with grim, dictatorial bravado (Harrelson handling his "wild man" role with panache, restraint, and humor). You play it strictly by the book. You don't talk to anybody but the N.O.K. You do not wait around for the N.O.K. You get in, you say your piece, and you get out.

    This is about the worst job you could imagine (or the Army could offer you), and, as shown here, downright dangerous. The N.O.K., especially if male, may not kill you, but they could very well physically attack you, and at the very least will launch into hysterics, or verbal abuse, or collapse and need immediate medical attention. Partly this movie is simply the study of a process most people don't know about, though again, they may not really want to know.

    The plot has to escape its confining how-to format. It does so -- not altogether successfully -- by having Will, who has not really gotten with the program, decide early on to violate protocol and become involved with the bereaved Olivia (Samantha Morton), who has a young son, who's black, and has a sad sweetness about her. The encounters between Olivia and Will are painful and awkward, but touching and sad. Neither of them is ready for a relationship. Olivia is passive, and kindly. When the captain originally tells her of her husband's death, she shakes both soldiers' hands and says "I know this can't be easy for, you," -- "a first!" the hardened Tony later exclaims. Will desperately needs to be of help or maybe just to rest his head on Olivia's breast.

    These people have nowhere to go -- though Olivia decides to head south. Painfully, all three reach out a little. Tony goes off the wagon ("I have to call my sponsor," he says, realistically, after a binge), but in doing so, and then going fishing and getting beaten up together, the two men bond.

    The weakness of the thoughtful, well-informed screenplay by Alessandro Camon and Moverman himself (who collaborated with Todd Haynes on the script of I'm Not There) is that the romance is a non-starter, too much of a distraction from the bonding between Tony and Will. The men's raucous intrusion on Will's ex's wedding party is a good set piece, but both men could use more of a back story. Moverman is said to have seen action in the Israeli army, and the movie is at its best in capturing the feel of military life -- the edge of craziness after long service, and the desperate refuge in routine, with an equally desperate need to escape from it. For all its weaknesses, this is a reasonably promising directorial debut for Moverman, though, as I am not the first to say, it is far from the great Iraq war movie Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker is.
    Last edited by Chris Knipp; 08-06-2014 at 03:47 PM.

  2. #2
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    THE MESSENGER (2009)

    An auspicious debut for director and co-writer Oren Moverman about the "angels of death" who notify civilians of the death of relatives serving in Iraq. Recently, the film received Oscar nominations for its script and the performance by Woody Harrelson. However, I found the performances by Samantha Morton and Ben Foster equally worthy of acclaim. Foster in particular demonstrates a wider performative range than he had displayed in previous features. The Messenger amply dramatizes the most obvious cost of war in the six harrowing scenes in which Harrelson and Foster "break the hearts" of the families of the recently killed. The film spends as much effort in showing how war affects those who made it back alive. Arresting as the performances of the principlas are, Moverman deserves credit for the uniformly excellent performances of actors playing peripheral characters. Moverman's background is primarily as a writer (Jesus' Son, I'm Not There) but here he displays skills heretofore unknown. For instance, the film's sense of authenticity is augmented by panning to elongate shots showing characters conversing rather than the classical shot/cut/countershot used to show two people talking. It is done very well throughout. I thought there was only one sequence that felt awkward and contrived, when in the middle of a drinking binge Harrelson and Foster put on quite a show at the latter's ex-girl's wedding reception. Critic M.E. Russell rightly points out that the scenes at the reception are the only ones that feel "actorly". Overall, The Messenger succeeds at drawing the viewer into the lives of their tragic characters and stimulating some thought about ancient issues that will not go away.

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    It's fair enough to say this is an "auspicious debut" for Moverman aa s director, but I believe there are more faults than you mention; and the one scene you fault I interpret differently. You don't go into very much detail about the action....

    Is the fact that you notice camera positions a plus?

    Perhaps because you don't like The Hurt Locker very much and The Messenger is the kind of war picture you like to see made, you can praise the latter more unreservedly.

    Is the wedding disturbance sequence is overly theatrical -- or jut embarrassing? I think the latter, but justifiably so. That is the nature of drunken behavior, to see exaggerated, inappropriate, embarrassing. The two men are both being drunks and Captain Stone is a recovering alcoholic who is having a bad relapse. If the acting was at fault I don't think the writing was at that point. As i said, it's a "a good set piece."

    But I think though The Messenger is interesting, fairly original, and generally well acted, it has some major weak points, which are at once shortcomings in the writing and dubious directorial decisions:

    The dreariness of the relationship between Will and Olivia, which only detracts from the other action.

    The meetings with the bereaved are too archetypal and nearly alll too pumped up for drama. Of course that's a theme of the screenplay: that delivering the news is a dangerous job, but I don't buy that it is as consistently dangerous, extreme, or theatrical as shown in the movie. (I did not mention this in my review; or underplayed it.)

    Despite these objections, which I point to as a corrrective to your sketchy praise, The Messenger tells a story worth telling, but because of its faults I opted out of including it in my best of 2009 lists.
    Last edited by Chris Knipp; 02-13-2010 at 12:55 PM.

  4. #4
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    I like this film substantially more than you do. Our differences of opinion in this case can be highlighted easily by noting that you find what goes on between Will and Olivia dreary and I think it is anything but. It doesn't "detract from the other action". It is, in my opinion, central to the film. Their final scene closes the film in a wonderful , somewhat ambiguous note. I also don't agree with your characterization of the notification sequences. I think THE MESSENGER is quite remarkable and I hope its two Oscar noms beget a larger audience for the film.

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