THE MESSENGER

The message: there's a war going on, remember?

By CARA BAYLES

del.ico.us | digg it! | reddit!

print | email | 11 Comments

"I think they ought to show every goddamn funeral on TV, live," Cpt. Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson) tells Staff Sgt. Will Montgomery (Ben Foster), his Casualty Notification Service protégé in The Messenger."Have the president come around from time to time and eulogize. Get people used to it. I mean, are we at war or not?"

But The Messenger takes this message one step further, showing us again and again the prologue to the orchestrated ceremony of a funeral ... depicting families in an emotional tidal wave moment, that awful gestalt of loss.

The film centers around characters who usually have bit parts in war movies. Everyone knows that when two officers in uniform ring a military family's doorbell looking for the next-of-kin, they aren't there to deliver a candy-gram. Will and Tony glimpse into the private worlds, and it's remarkable how much can be inferred. An Army wife living with parents who don't know she's married, an apartment inhabited by a Spanish-speaking father who bursts into tears, glancing back at his young grandchild ... these two-minute encounters peek into much longer narratives. Each moment of grief artfully constructs a backstory, a sense of who was lost by what was left behind, and each is punctuated by Will or Tony delivering the same rapid-fire spiel.

The directorial debut of Oren Moverman, who wrote the screenplay for the Bob Dylan not-quite-biopic I'm Not There, is both painful and full of wonder. Moverman shoots scenes, particularly the on-the-job shots, in long takes, with the fluid handheld quality of a documentary, letting the incredible performances breathe without slipping into melodrama.

The film straddles the military and the civilian beautifully. The mall where a widow buys her husband's funeral suit becomes a battleground when she runs into recruiters. Tony and Will are constantly on-call, with a beeper to alert them of the next K.I.A. After delivering the news to one family, Tony says: "There's no such thing as a satisfied customer" while children gleefully chase an ice cream truck in the background.

Yet, in a way, The Messenger is a buddy picture. Tony, a career Army man, stresses that he's had his "baptism" in the 100-hour Persian Gulf War. Will, who's just returned from Iraq, is a decorated hero with an elegant scar underlining his eye. They're the perfect opposites. Tony, a recovering alcoholic, relies on rules. He's strict about the military manual, which keeps him removed from his work. Harrelson masterfully creates a lonely man with a cultivated apathy, commenting off-handedly that it seems unfair to ruin a family's breakfast with bad news, before taking a lusty bite of his watermelon. Will, who's new at this, tries to remain stoic, but everything from Foster's blinking to his wild flailing when he's alone in his apartment is brimming with emotion. Soon, he wants to know more about the people whose lives he's affecting. It's unclear whether in getting involved, he's trying to save others or himself, particularly when he begins to follow a numb widow (Samantha Morton) and her son.

It's not as entirely depressing as it all sounds. Sure, it's filled with grief, but this quiet masterpiece is a gorgeous film about surviving ... outliving friends and family, making it through the desperate situations and, somehow, building a new life.

THE MESSENGER
RATED | R
OPENS | 11.20.09 KENDALL SQUARE CINEMA