Human face of war

Sam Mendes focuses on what happened to the fighting men in the vast desert.

He shattered the facade of United States suburbia, peered into the soul of a Chicago hitman and in his new movie, Jarhead, British director Sam Mendes is again examining an American subject - US Marines fighting in the 1991 Gulf War.

But don't expect the Oscar-winning film-maker to skewer US policy like Michael Moore's election-year documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, or shine a light on the absurdity of the Gulf War as did David O. Russell's 1999 film Three Kings.

Mendes, 40, focuses on the fighting men, how they got there and what happened to them after they landed in the vast desert. As he did in 1999's American Beauty and 2002's Road to Perdition, he explores complex thoughts and competing ideals in Jarhead, which opens on Friday in the US.

So film fans looking for a strong point-of-view on why US soldiers were sent to fight in the Gulf War or, by extension, to the battlefields in Iraq, should search beyond Jarhead.

"People will come to this movie thinking, 'Please, give me a way of treating this conflict,' and I think it would wrong of me to pretend the movie gave them an answer." he says. "What it does is make them understand the questions a bit better. What movies can do is humanise it."

Mendes' storytelling wowed audiences of American Beauty, which earned five Oscars including best film and best director.

But being considered among the best US films will require good reviews and crowds at box offices, and the jury is out on whether audiences want to see a movie about war when the nation and its allies, including Britain, are in one.

"I'd like to think there's a huge interest out there because it's part of our daily life," Mendes says.

Jarhead is based on Anthony Swofford's best-selling book about his experience as a 20-year-old Marine sniper who was sent to fight in Kuwait and ultimately became conflicted over his role there.

Swofford, portrayed in the film by Jake Gyllenhaal, is as drawn to the targets in the scope of his high-powered rifle as he is to the writings of French thinker Albert Camus.

He is trained to kill and eager for action, but boredom is all that awaits him as US planes pound Iraqis from overhead.

"What the film does that's most important ... is it opens up that world to people who don't know it," says Swofford.

Mendes says Swofford's book surprised him with the details about the soldiers' lives: playing football in chemical suits, putting on demonstrations for television news crews, watching Apocalypse Now and cheering the anti-war film.

When troops finally advanced into Kuwait, they found charred bodies, smoke-filled skies and black oil raining down from sabotaged wells.

"Weird, surreal images all in this empty space," Mendes calls them.

Visual imagery has become a trademark of Mendes' films. His fans will remember the falling rose petals of Beauty and the incessant rain in Perdition.

Mendes captures the Marines' wartime isolation through a film bleaching process that makes colours seem bland and blurs images on the edge of the main action.

Jarhead focuses on US Marines, but the experiences of soldiers at war is universal, he says. British, Spanish or any troops could have been affected in the same way.

Still, Jarhead is about everyday Americans, as was Beauty and Perdition, and Mendes is at a loss to explain exactly why his only three movies have touched so deeply on US cultural experience.

He hails from Reading, England, and went to Cambridge University. His career began in British theatre and from 1992 to 2002, he was artistic director for the Donmar Warehouse theatre in London.

Mendes was responsible for the revival of Cabaret, which updated the 1970s musical about 1930s Berlin for 1990s audiences. Cabaret won four Tony Awards, Broadway's equivalent of the Oscars, and for Mendes it captured the eyes of Hollywood.

Jarhead is the director's first film after 2 1/2 years off, during which he married and had a child with actress Kate Winslet.

"I wanted to stop. I felt a bit barren. I was working because that's what I did, as opposed to being passionate about what I was doing," Mendes says. But the passion has come back, and Jarhead is the result.

LOWDOWN

WHO: Sam Mendes, director and husband of Kate Winslet
BORN: August 1, 1965, Reading, England
FILMS: American Beauty (1999), Road to Perdition (2002)
LATEST: Jarhead opens Thursday

- REUTERS