Savasana

Rating: Null/10 (8 June 2016)

This is like all the Iraq movies where a few raggedly handsome troops stave off hordes of ululating savages. You can see how the western version would go, remote outpost in the desert ambushed all night by marauding Comanches. We would be asking in that case the same question; what business do these Yanks have being there in the first place? But always as afterthought to the thrill of will they climb over the wall. And Bay is addressing what I take to be a controversy of the cavalry not showing up.
After the long night, we celebrate bravery and brotherhood, briefly lament the needlessness. We cast a parting sorrowful glance at the mothers of the enemy crying over the bodies of their braves. We get to understand that omission is as much a part of this as cowboy courage, that the whole thing is overseen by calculating minds from afar. We don't get to see how the tribal viper's nest was poked by these overseers in a bid to remove Qaddafi.
But I have another response that outlasts all this in my mind, let me paint a picture. With these movies we fly over wartorn lands that have been devastated in innumerable ways, a sea of malaise stretching from Iraq to Libya. We swoop from above to find the handful of Americans wherever they are, wrongly or not, stay for the battle, see their courage, and fly off again with the bodies of fallen heroes.
There's a vast discrepancy here that doesn't wash with me. Between how precious and celebratory life is on one side and how wretched and nameless on the other. Between single lives of CIA contractors and the unwashed multitude. Between the luxury of a movie clocking at 2,5 hours to enshrine 13 hours to memory and a whole country in shambles where life is just washed away year in year out.