Calling All (Anti)-Heroes

What American Sniper Means for the Oscars

I wrote this for my film and entertainment reporting class on January 22, 2015, shortly after Selma was snubbed for an Oscar nom and American Sniper brought in a huge sum at the weekend box office.

Just when we thought that we had reached the calm after the Selma-snub storm, a torrent of new criticisms has been aimed at another film in the Oscar race — Clint Eastwood’s “American Sniper.”

Raking in a massive $107.2 million during its debut weekend and earning six Academy Award nominations, American Sniper shot past Selma’s $10.3 million MLK box office take and two contentiously debated Oscar nods. The Iraq War-biopic, starring Bradley Cooper as the most deadly sniper in American history, Chris Kyle, is also expected to bring in an additional $45 million this weekend.

And for every dollar that “American Sniper” has earned, there are a myriad of more opinions on the film’s source material — Kyle’s wartime memoir and the man behind its writing.

À la Arlene Croce, Dennis Jett at the New Republic did not see the film, but cited the former Navy Seal’s unabashed hatred for “savages” in his book, as evidence of Kyle’s non-heroic nature. The Guardian’s Lydie West questioned whether the film ultimately heroicized Kyle, a man who at “bare minimum, was a racist who took pleasure in dehumanising and killing brown people.” Meanwhile, polemical documentarian Michael Moore took his outrage to Twitter, saying that, “snipers aren’t heroes.” (He later qualified the statement in a Facebook post).

But all this controversy over the movie’s real-life inspiration prevents — as Greg Kilday wrote in The Hollywood Reporter — “any nuanced discussion of ‘Sniper’” as a film and as an Oscar contender.

It’s a film, such as “American Sniper,” which reminds us why the Oscars still matter. Oscar-worthy films are nominated not because their protagonists are perfectly heroic, (or true), but because they are powerfully human. And what can be more incredibly human than the challenging story of an anti-hero, such as Chris Kyle who had to contend with his killing of 160 people for a severely questionable cause, (if not his mind, then in the minds of many)?

What would the Oscar’s be if we didn’t challenge our notions of good and evil by considering the good, the bad and the ugly?

With Rosamund Pike’s nomination for “Gone Girl,” there’s already talk from “Awards Daily” of this being the “year of the female anti-hero.” Cooper, as Kyle, is a sure counterpart on the male side.

“American Sniper” is an impeccably compelling dramatization of a man caught with a rare talent — albeit a lethal one — in extreme circumstances.

If Jett and others had paid attention to the film’s trailer — patterned closely after the film’s intensely gripping opening scene — they would see Kyle wrestling deeply with the prospect of taking an innocent life. As Kyle, himself a father of two, stares down the barrel of his gun, he sees an Iraqi woman passing an unidentified object to her young son. Her long robe conceals its true nature. Could it simply be a snack? A cell phone? Or something more sinister? It’s up to Kyle to decide whether to shoot or withhold fire. You’re right there with him, at the edge of your seat, on the precipice of this life-altering decision.

Eastwood puts you in Kyle’s shoes, as an arbiter of life and death — no easy burden to bear — and Cooper drives that home with his penetratingly indecisive gaze. This situation is anything but straightforward and entirely complex precisely because of Kyle’s precarious moral positioning within the frame. You get the sense that this move will have as much impact on your life, as it will on Kyle’s and that little boy’s existence caught in the cross hairs.

Whether Kyle is good or bad is ultimately the viewer’s call, but extinguishing a life is no light matter. Neither Eastwood, nor Cooper, flinch from tackling that issue with extreme nuance and care within the film.

So if last year’s Oscar-theme was dedicated to celebrating “big-screen real-life heroes” and if “Hero” — a song about not wanting to be a hero, at all — is the anthem of fellow Best Picture candidate “Boyhood”, then let “American Sniper” be the contender for complicated “anti-hero.” I hear that the ladies already have a head start in that category.