In the Valley of Elah

In the movie "In the Valley of Elah" we meet Hank Deerfield. While trying to contact his son who's just returned home from serving in Iraq, his told that his son has become Absent Without Official Leave (AWOL). Hank drives to the military base to search for the truth about his son's disappearance. When neither the military or the civilian police seem very interested in the case Hank has to take the matter in to his own hands, being a retired warrior himself. He eventually gets help from Emily Sanders, a fairly new detective. Together they explore, piece by piece, the events leading up to the young mans disappearance.

The film clearly portrays young soldiers being affected by their time in Iraq. They have to make decisions it can be hard to face when coming back to “the real world”. Many of the soldiers try to find a way to “escape” the feelings and memories from Iraq. Some of they are maybe even trying to escape from themselves and who they have become. They turn to drugs, sex and violence. “In the Valley of Elah” takes up all these elements in the course of the film. The most important one is of course violence. Some of the soldiers have gone through tough times and seen and done things the everyday man on the street can not even begin to imagine. But the hard reality is that these men and women are young and easily affected. In the film we get to see how some soldiers takes the violence to far. They are not able to separate the live they have to live in Iraq and the life they are supposed to live back home.

The film is based on an article the director Paul Haggis read in a magazine about a young soldier being killed by one of his own. So this is not just a “filmproblem” but a problem we see in our own real world. It's quite clear that the film has a very strong antiwar undertone, and with a good reason if you ask me. We don't see any sign of the soldiers getting help or counseling when returning from a war zone. This might be the first step in making sure that things like we see in the film doesn't happen.