The Zen master says, “We’ll see.”: Charlie Wilson’s War at 10

Pat O'Donnell ; )
Jul 26, 2017 · 5 min read

It may be too cliché to say that Charlie Wilson’s War came out in a different time. Since 2007 the nature of politics and satire has changed so dramatically that it is almost alien. Jon Stewart was arguably at his prime and the dual wars in the Middle East were looking even farther away from “Mission Accomplished.” It was all but known that the presidency was going to go a Democrat and a new era was on the horizon. In the heat of this, Aaron Sorkin and Mike Nichols delivered a breezy, boozy satire about American involvement in the Soviet-Afghan War. This film delivered commentary on American involvement in the Mid-east while being touched with a strange sentimentality, pairing Sorkin’s political ire and Nichols’s filmic classicism.

Watching this film now, many moments of satire seem light at best. The film can feel muddled between the sentimental historical dramedy and the satire. There are scenes where Russians gun-down Afghan citizens in helicopters while Russian anthems play over the footage, evoking Full Metal Jacket. But are we supposed to read this as satirical, or just that these Soviets are truly bad? These moments read as horrific and the later images of children with scars from burns and missing limbs truly make the audience feel for the plight of the people of Afghanistan. But there are no attempts to humanize the Russians. The only time the Russians get to speak are in a scene where a helicopter pilot is discussing how serious his girlfriend wants to be and then the chopper is blown up by the mujahedeen. It feels far more like a throw away gag than a moment of understanding. This is what feels so lopsided about the film. A successful political satire understands that the politics are ridiculous and everyone suffers. This film tries to both be satirical and have classic “bad guys” in the Russians. Another problem is that sometimes the jokes are so on the nose that it does not operate as satire. Having an “Arab Slave” themed auction to fundraise for Pakistan? Wouldn’t Joanne see the inherent irony of that, regardless of her apparent class status? The film tries to draw parallels to the contemporary issues in the broadest ways often, having characters have lines about “American fence sitting” and having Doc Long call all Arab countries “extremist dictatorships.” Granted, a decade ago, the media landscape was not saturated with satire in the same way that we are now. The political critique of 2007 was limited to The Daily Show, which often positioned itself as a simple “comedy show” when the heat was turned to them, or milquetoast affairs like the Borowitz Report. Today, the President of the United States watches Saturday Night Live turn him into a grotesque monster and there are dozens of shows that comedically spin news stories into gold every night. Also, we are constantly exposed to (and often participate in) the non-stop political joke feed of Twitter and Facebook. This is not to excuse Charlie Wilson’s War for some of its less than stellar parody, merely to point out that today we expect far more searing indictments of our leaders.

With that said, there are still moments of this film that operate incredibly successfully. For me, the defining character is the constituent that is in the office of Charlie Wilson in the initial scene. Complaining that he cannot place a nativity scene on public property, he sums up the situation with the oft-spoken phrase “Who is it offending?” It optimizes the Republicanism of the Bush era — Christian, Patriotic and unwilling to comply with rules if they seem superfluous to one person’s specific experience. Wilson references that he was not elected by the people of his district but by contributors, a point that would only be further solidified 3 years later with Citizens United. My favorite moment of satire comes later in the film when Wilson brings Doc Long to an Afghan refugee camp in order to gain his sympathy to fund the war. In this scene, the crowd listening to his speech begins to chant “allahu akbar” and he eventually gets overwhelmed and joins in. Seeing a Republican congressman chant “allahu akbar” along with a group of Muslims has such a resonance with the audience when we know how vilified that phrase would become. The references to Rudy Giuliani, as a force trying to take Wilson down through political scandal, again feel like there is intentionality behind them. Giuliani quickly became the symbol of the patriotic politician in the Bush era but this film reminds us that he was a maneuvering politician just the same as the rest.

The true brilliance comes when the script hints at the consequences of the conflict that directly lead to the quagmire of the Middle East circa 2007. When Joanne says “I talk to God for one simple reason, we need Him on our side” and Wilson replies “Sooner or later, He will be on both sides” I am reminded with the insane Christianity lobbed around during the Bush era. The framework is more directly laid out when Gust, at the end of the film, tells Wilson about the Zen Master and the boy, how every moment is reacted to in real time while not seeing the larger picture. Sure, the commies can be forced out of Afghanistan, but left to their own devices much more sinister things can bubble up. And, as we know, they do. Wilson thought he was being a hero, but figured out that he could only do so much. Fighting the Soviets in a clandestine war gets Washington-types like Doc Long excited but the complicated business of rebuilding a country isn’t quite as fun. Gust knew this from the beginning, trying to tell Wilson about the Zen Master and the boy when they first met. But Gust continued with helping Wilson, hoping that ultimately, they would be able to do the right thing and rebuild Afghanistan. Instead, they can’t even get one million dollars “to build a school in Pakistan.”

Famously, this film was going to end with a much more overt reference to 9/11 but Hanks insisted that it be taken out. Critics have pointed to this as a weakness of the film, but I think that having a so-called “happy ending” makes the film even more poignant. Wilson receives his award, in a secret award ceremony, with a reserved smile on his face. His pride is obscured by his fear. The final quote perfectly sums the plot of the film and the emotion of the audience:

“These things happened. They were glorious and they changed the world… and then we fucked up the endgame.”

It is a metatextual layer that works with just as soft a touch as Nichols uses for all this film. An oblique image of tragedy doesn’t make us realize anything. We figure out, on our own, that these events were both heroic and short sighted. That there is never as simple a conflict as Reagan era commie hate would have us believe. And there is never a simple award ceremony in an airplane hanger. Just because the Bush era has ended and we are out of official war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the reverberations are still seen, in Syria and in Qatar. In the election of Trump and the rise in Islamophobic attacks. Charlie Wilson’s War was made in response to its specific time, as all films are, but we can unfortunately still feel the sting of its satire today

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