Having now seen “American Sniper,” I better understand why the left and the right are having their own skirmish over the film. As David Denby summarized in the New Yorker, the film is “both a devastating war movie and a devastating antiwar movie, a subdued celebration of a warrior’s skill and a sorrowful lament over his alienation and misery.”
Clint Eastwood’s film based on the life of Chris Kyle, the most successful sniper in American military history, can either fuel patriotic passions or re-open wounds about the decision to invade Iraq, depending upon one’s perspective upon entering the theater.
The best war movies—and “American Sniper” is now among them—delve into the complicated moral and psychological dualities of war.
In “Saving Private Ryan,” Capt. Miller must reconcile ordering men into battle and to their death for a greater good. “When you end up killing one of your men, you see, you tell yourself it happened so you could save the lives of two or three or ten others. Maybe a hundred others … that’s how you rationalize making the choice between the mission and the man.”
However, the way Capt. Miller delivers the line suggests he doesn’t fully believe his own argument. Can a human being successfully detach himself from the immediate consequences of his actions by coldly quantifying the benefit?
In “Full Metal Jacket,” Private Joker has “Born to Kill” written on his helmet, but also wears a button with a peace sign. When confronted by an officer about the contradiction, Joker explains that the conflicting messages represent the duality of man, that within each human being are competing moral opposites.
In the climactic scene, Joker seeks revenge for the death of his best friend, but is overwhelmed by sympathy when the sniper—a female Vietcong soldier—is gravely wounded.
“American Sniper’s” Kyle, on the surface at least, has no guilt about killing over 160 people. He tells a Navy doctor, “I was just protecting my guys. … I’m willing to meet my creator and answer for every shot that I took.”
Yet the war has left Kyle psychologically damaged. He’s proclaimed a hero yet believes he has abandoned his fellow soldiers. “My regrets are about the people I couldn’t save.” How can he be a hero if he’s home safe while his fellow soldiers are still dying?
Kyle doesn’t question whether the Iraq war is justified, but others close to him do. One of his best friends, Marc Lee, is killed in action, and at his funeral, Lee’s mother reads a letter where Lee expresses questions about the mission. “When does glory fade away and become a wrongful crusade?”
Kyle has a chance encounter with his younger brother, Jeff, who is rotating out after a tour in Iraq. Unlike the military’s most lethal sniper, Jeff Kyle sees Iraq as a lost cause. (The scene does not appear in Chris Kyle’s book, but Eastwood said it’s a composite character representing one point of view by some Iraq veterans.)
Ultimately, “American Sniper” does not pass judgment on the Iraq war. What the movie does is provide a penetrating view through the life of an extraordinary soldier of the physical, emotional and moral struggles that are inherent to war.