ANOTHER
QUICKIE
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.
After most famously establishing
herself as a comedian with her uncanny Sarah Palin imitation, and as a comic
actor in Sisters, where she uttered
more raunchy lines and dick jokes than, well, you could shake a dick at, Tina
Fey turns more serious in Whiskey Tango
Foxtrot. Rather loosely based on the
memoir Taliban Shuffle by Kim Barker,
who covered the fighting in Afghanistan, the movie uses the military lingo for
WTF, initials that every Facebook user understands. In her first non-comic role, Tina Fey plays
the reporter, called Kim Baker in the movie, which also transfers the
protagonist from print journalism to television. The film shows a great many episodes, some familiar
to any viewer of television news and some even indeed comic, in that useless
war that Kim Barker witnessed and reported on; in addition, it also shows the
activities of the whole gang of journalists, photographers, cameramen, and
their guides and interpreters.
The general substance of the movie
involves the growth and development of an inexperienced, generally ill equipped
journalist as she progresses through the chaos and destruction of war to
competence in her profession. After an
introduction to the chaotic life of a journalist in a war zone, Kim Barker
learns how to become a war correspondent.
She manipulates the Marine general (Billy Bob Thornton) in Kabul in
order to get a story; she outwits the lecherous attorney general (Alfred
Molina), and she begins an affair with a Scottish photographer (Martin
Freeman). After acquitting herself
admirably in a number of difficult situations, she also learns about the
betrayal of loyalty and competence through the actions of a colleague and her
boss (those familiar with my situation at City Newspaper will understand).
As
the novice in Afghanistan discovers, war itself provides an enormous rush of
adrenaline, a complicated mixture of emotions that explains some of the
attractions of combat, even for noncombatants.
Like a lot of participants in warfare, she finds the gunfire, the bombs,
the several skirmishes she covers, the discomfort of primitive quarters, and the
death and destruction somehow exhilarating and even addicting. Although the movie illuminates the progress
in learning and awareness of a courageous and resourceful young woman, it also
shows something most observers ignore, that war, despite its obvious horrors,
often arouses some powerfully positive emotions in people. It reveals to them a courage they may not
have known they possessed, it sometimes ennobles them, it encourages gestures
of sacrifice and honor, it intensifies all sorts of feelings. In the midst of danger, against the bloody
background of violence and destruction, people often even fall in love.
To
begin with, as a hundred years of cinema shows, Hollywood gives good war. The innumerable war films almost invariably
emphasize not only heroism and sacrifice, but also the moral and physical consequences
of mass combat. Although the movie employs
some witty situations and dialogue to convey some of the ambiguity of Kim
Baker’s experience of war, it also suggests some reversal of the usual war film,
a common point in contemporary cinema. In
short, although this time the protagonist is female and a noncombatant, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot belongs with some
other recent films, among them The Hurt
Locker and American Sniper; it
suggests, like it or not, some of the actual joys of war. It explains why soldiers encounter difficulty
accustoming themselves to peace, a letdown that seldom appears in the usual
discussions of post-traumatic stress disorder, and why some well known war correspondents frequently return to
the battle zones. War is hell, to be
sure, but it also is somehow a richly exhilarating experience.
