Sam Mendes Explains How "Jarhead" Is A Work Of Overseas Genius
Miffed that the critics and guilds have snubbed his meditative essay on the existential futilities of combat duty whilst stuffing your junk into seasonal headgear, Jarhead director Sam Mendes has spoken out on the subject of his misunderstood masterpiece. The problem, dear Americans, lies in your thick skulls:
"Fundamentally, Jarhead disobeys all the laws of American movies, and not just the political laws of American movies right now which demand on some level to tell us which side they're on.
"In Europe, there's a sense this film comes from the tradition of absurdist war movies about the futility of conflict.
"It has more in common with Beckett, Sartre and Bunuel than it does with Oliver Stone.
"In America, they assumed I was trying to make an Oliver Stone movie and that I'd failed."
Ironic that Mendes should use that particular director as an example, for when Stone's own Alexander was reviewed to almost universal disdain, he used a similarly deflective technique, saying, "They assumed I was trying to make a great historical DeMillian epic and had failed, when all I was really trying to do was to continue the treasured European theatrical tradition of spending $150 million, giving your lead a pathetic peroxide job and putting audiences to sleep with a protracted history lesson performed by a catatonic Anthony Hopkins. Those simpleton Yankee Doodle-heads have completely missed the point!"
