“˜Buffalo Soldiers’ set to grapple with controversy
By Paul Mendoza
July 27, 2003 9:00 p.m.
Director Gregor Jordan may have made a movie about war, but he
had no idea audiences would actually wage it.
“I was walking up to the stage for a Q&A and I saw
this plastic water bottle hit the floor,” he said of his trip
to Sundance this year. “Some woman had thrown it from the top
balcony, screaming and yelling. I thought it was quite interesting
that she waited until the end. I figured, “˜Well, at least she
wasn’t bored.'”
Jordan has fallen under intense scrutiny for his latest film,
“Buffalo Soldiers,” but has been taking it all in
stride. Many military proponents and conservatives have spoken out
against the film, claiming it to be anti-American, but the director
hopes that audiences will see the bigger picture in the wake of
heightened global tension.
“This film is about something beyond politics, like why we
want to keep fighting,” he said. “The fact that certain
people are getting upset about it now says more about them than it
does about the movie.”
“Buffalo Soldiers” is a darkly comic adaptation of
Robert O’Connor’s 1993 novel about American military
clerk Ray Elwood and his dealings in the German black market in the
late 1980s. The self-destructive nature of the characters in the
novel appealed to Jordan immediately.
“The first page had this quote by Nietzsche, “˜When
there is peace, the war-like man attacks himself,'” he
said. “I’d never seen that idea come across in a movie;
it kind of goes against the message of a lot of war films or
anti-war films. It’s an interesting idea that warfare is
somehow innate to human beings and is weirdly necessary.”
The title, “Buffalo Soldiers,” refers to a
post-Civil War black cavalry economically coerced into enlistment
and ordered to kill southwestern Native American tribes. According
to O’Connor, these soldiers were “risking everything
they had for something they would never benefit from.”
O’Connor’s critical outlook on the American military
permeates the book, but Jordan wanted to mitigate this.
“The book was very bleak in its tone, much, much darker
than the film,” he said. “In the book, the character of
Elwood is a junkie ““ he kills people, and he hires
prostitutes; he’s really a nasty piece of work. I
didn’t want to make a film that was that depressing; I wanted
a fun kind of contemporary energy to it that was still
edgy.”
The film’s edgy, all right; from a massive heroin cookout
to vivid acts of fraternal brutality, “Buffalo
Soldiers” comes out swinging right from the opening titles.
Its detractors accuse the film of disrespecting America and its
soldiers. But Jordan does not believe intense patriotism entitles
the U.S. military to insulation from the real world.
“American society has areas where drug use and racism and
violence are a big problem,” he said. “Why should the
military be somehow immune to these problems?”
Miramax has been very careful with “Buffalo
Soldiers,” which it bought at the Toronto Film Festival one
day before Sept 11, 2001. Two years and several delays later, there
is still apprehension over the film’s reception, but Jordan
feels that the studio acted appropriately.
“I think Miramax has done the right thing,” he said.
“Timing is everything in the release of any film. People just
wouldn’t be in the right mood for this type of film, because it is
confrontational and it forces people to be introspective about
themselves as Americans.”
The weeks leading up to its limited release have required much
televised introspection on Jordan’s part, and he confesses to
being “a bit CNN’d out.” But he hopes the
publicity will enlighten audiences, not just cause them to throw
plastic bottles.
“You want your film to evoke some sort of reaction,”
he said. “That’s what films are meant to do. I guess
I’m pleased that it’s provoking a reaction, but I
don’t really want to piss anyone off. I set out to make a
film that would make people think.”
