The Things They Carried

Author: Brian C (NJ)

The Things They Carried

Cast and Crew:
Director- Alfonso Cuarón
Writers- Tim O'Brien (novel)-
Hawk Ostby (screenplay)-
Mark Fergus (screenplay)-
Alfonso Cuarón (screenplay)
Cinematography- Emmanuel Lubezki
Editing- Steven Weisberg
Musical Score- Thomas Newman

Tim O'Brien- James McAvoy (Narrator)
Jimmy Cross- Alexander Skarsgård
Kiowa- Adrian Grenier
Bob "Rat" Kiley- James Franco
Norman Bowker- Jamie Bell
Dave Jensen- Derek Luke
Lee Strunk- Jack Huston
Mitchell Sanders- Paul Dano
Ted Lavender- Giovanni Ribisi
Elroy Berdhal- Harry Dean Stanton

* The author of the novel The Things They Carried and the protagonist of the same book are both named Tim O'Brien. O'Brien named the character after himself in writing the book, although they are not the same person and the work as a whole is fiction.

Tagline: "They carried guilt, regret, and insanity, but most of all, they carried each other."

Synopsis:
Tim O'Brien is a hard-working and well intentioned young man whose life, like thousands of other men, was drastically changed upon the arrival of one letter in the mail. O'Brien receives his draft notice in the summer of 1968, and is immediately disheartened by the news. Angry and confused about his fate, O'Brien makes an impulse move to run away to Canada. He stays at an old inn where he meets Elroy Berdhal, a frail old man. Scared that he will not have the courage to fight at war, O'Brien pushes himself towards fleeing, ultimately realizing that he does not have the courage to run away either. Berdhal helps O'Brien rethink his priorities, and O'Brien eventually makes the trip back home.

Six months later, O'Brien is designated to a platoon in the Alpha Company. His platoon leader is Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, a man who is distracted by his love for Martha, his love back home. Cross is completely consumed with everything about Martha, but he is most consumed with the fact that she does not return his love. This distraction eventually leads to the death of a fellow soldier, Ted Lavender. Cross burns all of his pictures of Martha out of frustration and guilt, vowing to stay focused on the lives of his soldiers and the orders that he is given. While Cross burns his pictures, the other soldiers mourn Lavender's death by smoking the marijuana that they found in his backpack.

Amidst the frequent battles and the deaths of his fellow soldiers, O'Brien watches everyone around him crumble under the pressure. O'Brien becomes friends with Dave Jensen and Lee Strunk, who are constantly fighting because they find it difficult to deal with the hardships of war. One argument becomes so heated that Jensen purposely breaks his own nose as an issue of apology. The two men develop an unspoken bond after this argument, and agree to kill the other if they should suffer a life altering injury in battle. When Strunk steps on a mine though, he begs Jensen not to kill him, and Jensen complies. The platoon receives word that Strunk died three days later as a result of the injury, leaving Jensen feeling depressed and relieved at the same time.

Shortly after Strunk's death, O'Brien also experiences the trauma of being shot while away at war. The first time O'Brien is wounded, the platoon's medic, Bob "Rat" Kiley is able to help him quickly, and he spends a few short weeks working at a base camp before returning to action. When he returns though, he sees distinct changes in Rat Kiley. The other soldiers tell him that the war has slowly been eating at Kiley's head, and after a few weeks Kiley shoots himself in the foot in order to get a discharge. Later, O'Brien gets wounded again, but he does not have the expertise of Kiley to help him through the situation. The new medic, Bobby Jorgenson, tries to help, but fails in his nervous state. O'Brien, angry about Jorgenson's struggles as a medic, enacts revenge with a fellow soldier in the form of a night of cruel pranks.

Only days after falling into an emotional downspiral, sparked by his first killing of a Vietnamese soldier, O'Brien loses his best friend in battle. Kiowa, a Native American soldier who wears moccasins instead of boots, befriended O'Brien initially seeing that he was scared and helpless in the war environment. After setting up camp in what was essentially the town latrine though, the platoon is ambushed at night and Kiowa is killed. Several soldiers, including O'Brien and another soldier named Norman Bowker, make attempts to pull Kiowa out of "shit field" in order to save his life, but they cannot overcome the smell or pick themselves up without revealing their cover. The soldiers blame Cross for not investigating the site before setting up camp, and they are led by Mitchell Sanders, a very argumentative soldier, in their blaming of Cross. Several years after the war, O'Brien visits Cross to discuss the events that they occurred. O'Brien reveals that Bowker hung himself out of guilt upon his return home, ashamed of the fact that he could not gather the courage to save Kiowa.

Twenty years later, O'Brien takes taken his daughter on a trip to Vietnam, mostly in hopes of trying to explain the events that occurred during the war. O'Brien stops at the field, and takes out Kiowa's old moccasins, the only thing he could salvage from his dead body. In an effort to finally gain closure on the events that surrounded him, O'Brien buries Kiowa's moccasins in the field, mourning for not only the soldiers who died, but also praying for the ones who lived.

What The Press Would Say:
The Things They Carried has officially marked the return of the Vietnam War epic and in stunning fashion no less. Bringing his own new taste to the once popular genre, Cuarón matches the intensity of classics such as Platoon and Apocalypse Now while also adding his personal touch. Cuarón manages to focus in on each soldier, showing the extreme emotional change that they endure, while still capturing the intensity of the Vietnam War as a whole. He shows the terror of the Vietnam War not only through the violence of the battles, but also through the deep emotional conflict that each soldier endures.

Cuarón certainly outdoes his past films, such as Children of Men, and he owes much of this to his young, but still very brilliant cast. McAvoy is fantastic as the leading man of the film. His portrayal of a young, helpless, and confused soldier reminds the viewer that how innocent and naïve most soldiers were upon entering the war. McAvoy never lets the viewer forget that we were in fact sending young college students to become trained killers, and he does a terrific job of portraying that painful transition.

McAvoy is certainly not the only stunning performance of the film though. He gets great help from his supporting cast, particularly from Alexander Skarsgård and James Franco. Skarsgård takes on the soldier role once again, after being in the acclaimed HBO miniseries Generation Kill. His performance as a love stricken lieutenant truly shows the burdens that can come with the responsibility of a man's life though. Skarsgård plays a distraught soldier who is conflicted between his love interest back home, and the lives of the soldiers he is responsible for, and Skarsgård brings his character's guilt and regret to life. His character realizes that he must take the blame for the deaths of his soldiers in order to keep a high moral in the platoon, and Skarsgård does a tremendous job of portraying that struggle over the guilt.

Possibly giving the most powerful performance of the entire film though is James Franco. Franco plays a medic who is slowly reaching insanity, and he reveals this intensity in two particular scenes. The first involves Franco's brutal killing of a water buffalo out of anger after the death of a fellow soldier. Franco hurdles a blood-curdling scream as he brutally murders the helpless animal, and the rest of the platoon can only watch in horror. His second magnificent scene is when he finally snaps and makes the decision to wound himself so he can leave Vietnam. Franco does a particularly good job of showing his character's confliction, and how that confliction was worsened by his brutal surroundings.

This film truly has all the pieces to go down in history as one of the best war movies of all time. Certainly on the same level as other Vietnam War epics such as Platoon and Apocalypse Now, The Things They Carried has the stirs up emotions and intensity that few other films can even touch. Cuarón was certainly at his best with this film, and he had a realistic and enticing script thanks to his collaboration with acclaimed writers Hawk Ostby and Mark Fergus, who he had worked with previously. With a terrific script, a terrific director, and a terrific cast, The Things They Carried has certainly managed to bring the Vietnam War back to life and Cuarón has certainly given Tim O'Brien's novel all the justice it deserves.

FYC:
Best Picture
Best Director- Alfonso Cuarón
Best Actor- James McAvoy
Best Supporting Actor- Alexander Skarsgård
Best Supporting Actor- James Franco
Best Adapted Screenplay