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HACK OR GENIUS?: THE GREAT PAUL HAGGIS DEBATE...

On In the Valley of Elah: Houseman says "Haggis capitalizes on tragedy," Kirschenbaum says "he makes a point" 

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By Tom Houseman & Josh Kirschenbaum

Tom: When fellow writer Josh Kirschenbaum suggested that the two of us have an online debate, I jumped at the opportunity. I was excited to initiate Josh to The Oscar Igloo staff by ripping him a new one, tearing out his soul and leaving him a broken shell of his former self. The first topic he suggested was the always controversial Paul Haggis. Anyone who has ever spoken to me about the Oscars knows just how much I hate Haggis and if Josh wanted to defend the man, I figured I could vent my hatred in public. Let's get it started...

Topic I: Paul Haggis- Spawn of Satan, or Misunderstood Artist?

Tom: This afternoon I went to see Paul Haggis’s latest film, In the Valley of Elah. This is proof of my masochistic tendencies, because I knew I would hate this movie. My worst suspicions were confirmed: In the Valley of Elah is essentially a long, boring episode of “Law & Order”, heavy on the schmaltz but lacking in logic. The film is dull and impersonal, with thoroughly unlikable characters and contrived dialogue that would make Aaron Sorkin choke. It was everything I expected from Haggis. My first experience with Haggis was a pleasant one; Million Dollar Baby was an excellent film with a great screenplay that deserved its Oscar nomination. Since then, Haggis and I have been on the outs. It’s possible that the second half of Crash is a brilliant film that is not overloaded with racist ideas and absurd plotlines, but, having never seen the second half, I wouldn't know. Crash holds a place next to The Cat in the Hat and Balls of Fury on the list of movies I have walked out of. I would have forgiven Haggis for this offensive piece of junk had the film not stolen Best Picture from Brokeback Mountain, easily the best film of the year. It is technically not Haggis' fault that his film won Best Picture but he created that garbage, and therefore deserves the blame.

Things have not gotten worse with Haggis, but they have not gotten any better. Flags of Our Fathers was not nearly as offensive as Crash, but it might have been a worse movie, and its screenplay was awful. I place all of the blame on Haggis for tainting the talent of co-writer William Broyles Jr., who wrote the screenplay for Jarhead, one of the best war films of the decade. I didn’t go see The Last Kiss, which Haggis wrote, and which looked terrible, and I had no interest in watching Haggis’s TV show The Black Donnelly’s. I can only dream of an alternate universe where Haggis’s career ended after he wrote the made-for-TV sequel, The Return of the Shaggy Dog, and never got a chance to having his atrocious writing put on screen in Crash, Flags of Our Fathers, and now In the Valley of Elah.

Josh: At least we agree on one thing: Flags of our Fathers had a god-awful screenplay. I do find it interesting that you place the blame on Haggis. His co-writer, William Broyles Jr., is more likely the source of the trouble. Like you, I thoroughly enjoyed Jarhead. I thought it was an exquisitely filmed movie with some good performances from some good actors (though Jamie Foxx gave an unbearably one-note performance). What stops it from being one of the “best war films of the decade” (as you put it) is its screenplay, which has a distinct lack of fluidity. Funny enough, Flags of our Fathers is another movie that just doesn’t flow smoothly from one scene to another. I’m sure you see my reasoning in assigning blame to Broyles, and not Haggis.

I’m sorry you hated Haggis’s latest film, In the Valley of Elah. I thought it was a well made film that made an important point: the Iraq war is impacting our country in an incredibly adverse way. It’s simple, it’s blunt, it’s certainly “heavy on the schmaltz,” but it’s also a powerful, disturbing film. Haggis is remarkably restrained (at least compared to Crash) and spends time developing his characters in surprising subtle ways. For example, Hank (Tommy Lee Jones) keeping his hotel room at a military level of cleanliness. Speaking of Tommy Lee Jones, Haggis directs him to his second greatest performance (the first being No Country for Old Men, which will be released in November).

You make an important point about Haggis’s dialogue. Many people criticize it for being contrived and unrealistic. In all honesty, I don’t think it’s particularly remarkable. But mediocre dialogue never killed a film, and it certainly doesn’t make someone spawn of Satan.

Tom: On the issue of Broyles vs. Haggis concerning whom to blame for the dreck that was the Flags of Our Fathers screenplay, I have one important point to make: what made Flags of Our Fathers so terrible was the horribly drawn, one-dimensional characters and the dull monotonous plot. Jarhead had fascinating and fully developed characters (even Foxx's character, whatever you might think of his performance, was an actual person, as opposed to the stick figures that pervaded Flags), chillingly powerful dialogue, and a gripping plot. Crash had none of those things. In the Valley of Elah certainly had none of those things. You can argue about the fluidity of the plot in Jarhead, but I thought that Broyles executed his story perfectly. In the hands of a lesser writer, it might have been a mess; coincidentally, the plot of Flags was a mess, largely because of the hands of a lesser writer.

I am glad that you learned from In the Valley of Elah how terrible the situation in Iraq is. However, had you seen No End in Sight, Iraq in Fragments, The Ground Truth, The War Tapes, any number of documentaries about the subject, or any news coverage of the war, you would have realized this point sooner. Everyone already knows how terrible the situation in Iraq is; all Haggis did was abuse our sympathy for the soldiers in Iraq by creating an emotionally manipulative film that says nothing new about the war. Capitalizing on human tragedy makes you the spawn of Satan in my book, and it is only because he is such a terrible writer that his film failed miserably to achieve its goal, beyond hammering into our heads something we already know: war is bad. If you want to see a great film that tackles this subject in a powerful and nonmanipulative way, see Oliver Stone's Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July.

There is nothing subtle about In the Valley of Elah; Haggis telegraphs everything from a mile away. Every frame screams that Tommy Lee Jones still lives his life like he is in the army, that Susan Sarandon is a helpless woman who has no relationship with her son (why on earth did she take such a terrible, pointless part?) and that Charlize Theron is the only woman cop, striving for justice on a police force filled with lazy, oafish, sexist men. It is hard to be subtle when making a war film, but Haggis never even tries, and the result is nauseating.

Josh: You make an interesting point about capitalizing on human tragedy. It seems unforgivable, but isn’t that what every “based on a true story” movie does? All the way back to Best Years of Our Lives and probably before, it has always been Hollywood’s interest to use human tragedy to make a statement about human nature. To me, that’s what In the Valley of Elah was about. It never really took a side on the war, but the pain in Jones’ eyes could be the pain of any father of a dead soldier. Though many people take it for granted, the choice to make the main character a “good old boy” was a very interesting one. Elah is not completely against the Iraq war. Its message is more about the toll that the insanity of the war (which could be any war) has taken on our soldiers and our citizens. It’s nothing new (Countless films were made on the same subject in the context of the Vietnam War), but it needed to be said about this war. I haven’t seen any of the documentaries you mentioned. But it’s in my opinion that a good fictional war movie can affect people more than a documentary can. I’m sure that the first twenty minutes of Saving Private Ryan impacted people more than any documentary possibly could.

I admit that Haggis is heavy-handed in his execution. He almost always is. but maybe that isn’t quite as bad as you think it is. Whatever you may think of Crash (I think it’s mediocre, but pretty good in comparison to a lot of other movies that year), it was a movie that really affected a lot of people. That’s why it’s on the IMDB top 250 films of all time. Blunt as it may be, it got a lot of people thinking about racism in America. Maybe that’s Haggis’s niche: making straight-forward (sometimes manipulative) movies that may be artistically lacking in one way or another but still get people to think, if only for a moment.

Josh and Tom could go on and on about Haggis but we really want to know what you think, Join our Forum Debate now!

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