"Elah" brings the invisible scars of Iraq vets into focus

Paul Haggis set new Academy Awards records by getting nominated three years in a row for the best-screenplay Oscar: for "Million Dollar Baby," "Crash" and "Letters from Iwo Jima." He won for "Crash," the provocative race-and-class drama that also took the Oscar for best picture of 2005.

"In the Valley of Elah," which opened last Friday and is the first film the Canadian filmmaker has directed since "Crash," takes on another tough subject: the mental condition of soldiers returning from Iraq. The script by Haggis and Mark Boal is loosely based on the case of U.S. Army Spc. Richard Davis, who was murdered when he got back from Iraq in 2003.

"While I was working on 'Crash,' I was going online to find out what was going on with soldiers in Iraq," Haggis said by phone. In May 2004, he found what he was looking for: "Death and Dishonor," a Playboy magazine piece about Davis.

Haggis optioned the rights and started to work on the script, which relocates the story from Georgia to New Mexico. But he maintains that most of the key locations, including a fast-food restaurant and a strip joint, reflect the facts in the Davis case.

"I ended up combining several true stories," he said. "I looked at documentaries and talked to veterans, but I invented only one scene." Shortly after the movie came out, he saw a newspaper article, about a veteran's wife being drowned in a bathtub, that nearly duplicated the event he created for the film.

"So many suicides have been reported, and there are so many homeless returning soldiers, living in ramshackle conditions," he said. "This is a national problem, and we're just ignoring it."

Although the movie stars Tommy Lee Jones and Susan Sarandon as the parents of the murdered boy, and Jason Patric and Frances Fisher have key roles, several of the supporting parts are played by unknowns: veterans whose memories of Iraq were fresh.

"There's a level of truth there that's really hard to fake," said Haggis, who has shown the picture in rough-cut form to soldiers. "I didn't want to make a film that veterans would find false. It's not easy for them to watch, but they do say it's a true experience."

The actors used a cellphone and a small digital camera to create the flashing images, corrupted by heat waves, that suggest what veterans saw in the Middle East. The Iraq scenes were shot in the slums of Marrakesh.

Charlize Theron's character, a detective who fights bureaucracy and sexism to help Jones find out what happened to his son, is a composite of "several people who persisted over many months," said Haggis.

The movie's title comes from the biblical story of David and Goliath, which takes place in the valley of Elah. Jones reads it to Theron's young son.

"That just came to me as I was writing the script," said Haggis. "I figured Hank [Jones' character] probably read the Bible, and he was looking for a story to tell. It's a story of remarkable bravery. The title just kept coming back to me."

It also began to stand for the special qualities that American soldiers are required to demonstrate in Iraq.

"What are we asking them to be?" he asked. "Soldiers, cops, social workers? We've put them in a situation where any action can result in tragedy."

John Hartl: johnhartl@yahoo.com