Lyle had been serving as a marine officer in and around the Helmand province for about five months before Rolling Stone published “The Runaway General” (June 2010), the explosive profile of General Stanley McChrystal and his entourage.
Thanks, guys, for another lively, lucid, informative discussion.
BTW my favorite moment in the movie, one that haunts me, is the scene in the tent where the General has come to offer a pay-out to the mourning Pashtun father for the death of his son, lying in a blanket at the father’s feet. A younger boy (the dead boy’s brother?) sits alongside the father. The moment I’m talking about is wordless. It occurs as a long look between the boy and the General after all the talking is over. The camera moves back and forth between the two faces. The General’s is screwed up in his trademark Popeye the Sailor squint that ordinarily conveys a mix of suspicion, impatience, and determination— the “look” that has got him to the height of power. The camera lingers on the boy’s face as he looks back directly at the General. The boy’s eyes are beautifully limpid, their pupils dark and bottomless. They are eyes that seem to take in all of the General, probing deeply into the man’s soul and reflecting back to the General exactly what the boy sees there: not an inexplicably deadly monstrosity, but a sad, confused, frightened muddle of a man, lost in a dark wood. It is a look of love and pity, quickly and silently given and then— life resumes, and the General goes his way, as do we, the viewers, who have seen what the General has seen and have to ask ourselves whether what the boy saw in the General was what the boy might see in us, and if so, how do we live with that knowledge?
Amazing scene! Maybe the most tender, but also maybe the most exposing of Brad Pitt's character, and ultimately I kept thinking there was a good chance that kid was going to pick up arms against the US. For a kind of goofy film, it had a lot great moments in different ways!
Thanks, guys, for another lively, lucid, informative discussion.
BTW my favorite moment in the movie, one that haunts me, is the scene in the tent where the General has come to offer a pay-out to the mourning Pashtun father for the death of his son, lying in a blanket at the father’s feet. A younger boy (the dead boy’s brother?) sits alongside the father. The moment I’m talking about is wordless. It occurs as a long look between the boy and the General after all the talking is over. The camera moves back and forth between the two faces. The General’s is screwed up in his trademark Popeye the Sailor squint that ordinarily conveys a mix of suspicion, impatience, and determination— the “look” that has got him to the height of power. The camera lingers on the boy’s face as he looks back directly at the General. The boy’s eyes are beautifully limpid, their pupils dark and bottomless. They are eyes that seem to take in all of the General, probing deeply into the man’s soul and reflecting back to the General exactly what the boy sees there: not an inexplicably deadly monstrosity, but a sad, confused, frightened muddle of a man, lost in a dark wood. It is a look of love and pity, quickly and silently given and then— life resumes, and the General goes his way, as do we, the viewers, who have seen what the General has seen and have to ask ourselves whether what the boy saw in the General was what the boy might see in us, and if so, how do we live with that knowledge?
Amazing scene! Maybe the most tender, but also maybe the most exposing of Brad Pitt's character, and ultimately I kept thinking there was a good chance that kid was going to pick up arms against the US. For a kind of goofy film, it had a lot great moments in different ways!