Lions for Lambs (2007)

rating: ****

the story: Two conversations tackle the state of America in 2007.

review: From the vantage point of 2018, the conversation in America sucks.  Lions for Lambs captures perhaps the last real opportunity the nation had to correct this before it became impossible for differences to be set aside and people to be civil about their political differences.  At the time of its original release, it was dismissed as talky, academic.  I always found the results, all the same, to be fascinating.  Today they're downright essential.

A political science professor played by director Robert Redford and a brilliant but disenchanted student played by Andrew Garfield form one of the conversations.  A hotshot Republican played by Tom Cruise and a liberal reporter played by Meryl Streep form the other conversation.  Soldiers played by Michael Pena, Derek Luke, and Peter Berg participate in military maneuvers, illustrating the realities of what their talking about.  I love the idea of Redford, Cruise, and Streep converging on something.  I love Garfield already submerging himself in vital material.  I think few actors today have chosen as interesting material, as consistently, as Andrew Garfield.

Cruise was still working at winning back his credibility after his affiliation with the Church of Scientology had become toxic.  Today he subsists mostly on Mission: Impossible movies.  The opportunity has definitively, it seems, been lost.  Back in 2007, though, Lions for Lambs is a kind of latter-day answer to Born on the Fourth of July, the Oliver Stone movie where Cruise plays a real-life veteran who after having become paralyzed in Vietnam becomes disenchanted and begins protesting the war.  Garfield's role is the complete opposite of that role; he never even signs up.  That's exactly the legacy of the Vietnam era right there.  I saw it myself on campus in the early part of the century.  Garfield doesn't believe he can affect change, despite his passionate, well-considered opinions.  Today we see students protesting...everything.  But we don't see them inserting themselves into the process.  We've collectively decided the process is broken, just as Garfield's character does.  But Redford challenges Garfield to choose a different path.  He admits he was a Vietnam protester, too.  But to motivate Garfield, he tells him about two other students he had, Luke and Pena, who chose very different paths, enlisting in the army.  They give a brilliant presentation in his class explaining exactly why.

It's the juxtaposition of their thought process, Garfield's, and the fact that Redford is willing to support all three of them despite having other ideas.  He sees it as essential that participation, not protest, is chosen as a reaction.  When Obama was first elected, he was called a symbol of hope, that the system could still work.  After the Bush presidency, voters wanted to believe in positive change.  Yet Obama ended up presiding over a further polarized culture, not because he was black but because protest became a permanent way of life, disengagement, cynicism.

And that's what Cruise and Streep's conversation reflects.  Meryl Streep's career fascinates me.  At this point she hadn't yet chosen to represent the protests of Hollywood.  That was still reserved for documentary filmmakers.  She was only a few years removed from portraying a pastiche of Hillary Clinton in The Manchurian Candidate.  Later, she'd rocket to new levels of acclaim playing all sorts of morally superior figures, and be rewarded with a staggering array of Oscar nominations.  She'd become a figure out outrage.  Her character in Lions for Lambs ultimately decides on that path.  She opts to give up the idea of dialogue with the other side, after sitting through the conversation with Cruise.  Her producer begs her to keep trying.  She decides it isn't worth it anymore.

It's the kind of conclusion you can either agree with or find unsettling.  I find it the latter, and I see that as exactly what happened, over the past decade, and I think that was a massive mistake.  This is a movie that reflects what could've been.  And now it stands as a testament to what didn't happen, and why.

Maybe it's a little hard to watch, because it is talky, but sometimes that's exactly what's necessary.  Arguably, more than necessary.  And now it serves as testament to what should have happened, and why.  The sad part is, we know it was rejected at the time, as well as the idea it represented.