American Sniper: people not politics

As the screen faded to black and hundreds of moviegoers filed out of the 9:30 p.m. showing of American Sniper on Saturday, Jan. 17, the post-film mood was not a familiar one at the Grand Haven 9. The entire room was deathly quiet. The only audible noise was the muffled whispers of a shocked audience, still mulling over what they had just seen as they exited the theater. No clapping. No cheering. Just silence.

After talking with a number of friends, I’ve realized that this similar scene was not uncommon in various Sniper viewings. The movie is impactful and hits its audience hard, there’s no doubt about it.

However, with the nature of combining war and film comes the consequence of political outrage. Many movie critics, such as Matt Taibii of Rolling Stone, claim that to direct a movie attempting to separate the two is foolish. Taibii wrote, “Well done, Clint! You made a movie about mass-bloodshed in Iraq that critics pronounced not political! That’s as Hollywood as Hollywood gets.”

While I tend to agree that such a controversial topic cannot avoid outcry from either side of the political spectrum, I also feel as though upset Americans such as Taibii are missing the point entirely. Sniper doesn’t address the politics of the war because it’s about the people that were physically involved – the people that may have survived all the fighting but still “gave their lives” to this country because they were simply incapable of leading normal lives once their service was over and they returned home.

This idea really hit me walking out of Theater 9 on that cold, Saturday night. I entered the building that night expecting a story about Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, the war hero who spent nine years in Iraq killing “bad guys.” What I actually saw was much different.

Sniper had a much greater purpose than simply honoring Kyle’s legacy. Taibii wrote, “The only thing that forces us to take it seriously is the extraordinary fact that an almost exactly similar worldview consumed the walnut-sized mind of the president who got us into the war in question.” But this movie wasn’t about the mistakes made by the leadership that brought troops to the Middle East in the first place – those decisions have already been made and can’t be fixed now.

What can be fixed is the thousands of men like Chris Kyle that can’t sleep at night or can no longer love their families or the same way they once could because of PTSD and the traumatizing experiences they had overseas. They’re the ones we should be talking about. We could spend all day arguing over the politics of a war that ended years ago, but to me, assisting those in need and shedding light on this important issue is a much better use of our time. The makers of American Sniper really get that.