Lions for Lambs -- Too Preachy But On-Point

I can understand why Lions for Lambs, Robert Redford’s recent movie, received mixed reviews; in fact, I can completely understand why many people would hate it. It is preachy, very preachy. About a third of the movie shows Tom Cruise’s character (a Republican senator) preaching at Meryl Streep’s character (a veteran reporter) in support of the administration’s war on terror, while the reporter in turn preaches to the senator about the mistaken war in Iraq. In the process, they preach at each other about their complicity in America’s failures.

That’s already a lot of preaching.

But here is the genius of the movie: it questions whether the political debates in government and academia have any meaning at all. The sympathetic heroes of the movie are two young men who tire of the arguments and choose action, to wit, going to Afghanistan to fight for their country. They end up in mortal danger as a result of political decisions that are being debated in offices and hallways a long way away.

The movie itself has four main settings. The first is the office of the senator. In the second, a university professor’s office, Robert Redford’s character debates a promising but disengaged student about his role in life. In the third setting, the reporter is arguing in her editor’s office about the role of the press. The fourth is a snowy mountain ridge in Afghanistan.

The first Great Debate is between the senator and reporter. Both are consummate insiders. The senator is a key player in a new aggressive military strategy in Afghanistan, with implications for Iraq, Iran, and the entire Near East. The reporter’s first reporting job concerned Vietnam, and her liberal sensibilities -- anti-Republican and anti-war -- come through loud and clear. After running through the well-worn arguments for and against military action in Asia, the two end up challenging each other over who is using who in the relationship between media and government. The reporter takes the argument back to her editor and it takes on a different slant: what is the relationship between the corporate world and "real" news?

The more accessible argument is between the professor and the student. The professor is a Vietnam vet turned protester, who became a professor. He thought that he could use his mind, his words, and his professorial credentials to change the world. He failed. He resigned himself to a different mission: to single out a few exceptional students and push them toward greatness.

Now, those of us who teach the social sciences can be forgiven, I think, for considering the professor something other than a failure. We teach about history and geography and politics, but these are things that don’t necessarily reach most kids, but for good reason. They do not have a frame of reference for understanding the vital importance of these subjects. But as they grow up, they will use what we teach -- though probably without awareness -- as they connect the mental dots and make sense of the world.

The student opposite Redford’s professor became a cynic, figuring at a young age that certain elites make the decisions, and that even entering those elites is corrupting. So make some money, live the good life, and wash your hands of the decisions made in the halls of power.

This brings me to Afghanistan. Two soldiers were in the professor’s class. They chose action, they chose to do something. They believed that serving their country gave them credibility as agents of change that academia did not. The professor tried to dissuade them, but they joined the Army, as Special Forces soldiers. This put them in grave danger, and this tied them to the other debates.

Should the student live the good life or should they risk being pinned down by the Taliban in an icy gorge in the Hindu Kush? How much does it matter if the senator’s military plan is the right one? Does it diminish the soldiers’ nobility and exonerate the professor and student who choose a battlefield of words in a cushy college setting? If the soldiers die, is the reporter to blame for playing the insiders’ games instead of sounding the alarm? Does the path of action turn the soldiers into pathetic pawns in a game played for the benefit of distant powers? Or are they the only real players and the pathetic ones are the suits who send our hopes into the snowy skies over a shadowy and barren country?

Maybe the world is just too complicated for regular folks, and the noble life of action is the morally correct one. Maybe the debates of wonks in Washington or New York no longer connect to the real world.