To put this into context, the majority of us at the press conference had seen Green Zone about an hour before we found ourselves sitting infront of the two people responsible for giving new meaning to the term ‘action film’. As a pair, Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon have made the last two (and best) installments of the Bourne trilogy, and, I believe, most of us had come out of the screening of their third effort feeling pleasantly surprised that they had built on that track record, without merely replicating it.
Yet this didn’t stop Greengrass from being defensive from the very first question. Asked what he was trying to convey through Green Zone, he felt it immediately necessary to affirm that he did indeed have something to say, and that the film is much more than, as the phrase being tossed around indicates, ‘Bourne in Baghdad.’
I had found before the conference a wonderful quote from Greengrass in Vanity Fair. He said in that interview that he feels “it is never too soon for cinema to engage with events that shape our lives.” That is, as he put it, people watch films for all sorts of reasons: to escape, to laugh, to relate, but also, most importantly, to connect with reality and engage with politics. This last realm, he said, is the hardest for directors to successfully pay testament to, without creating something so niche that the film becomes irrelevant. Yet he retained a belief in the possibility of popular movies of a serious, social nature. Can we honestly say anyone would have a better chance of creating such a film, than the men with the backing of the Bourne fan-base?
Greengrass argued the reason people liked the Bourne trilogy was not only because of its adrenalin and action, but also because of the aura of lying and truth-exposure that dominates all three of the films. The task was thus to bring the same audience across to a film with similar themes, but which was now asking these questions in the context of the real world. Damon said he knew instantly that the WMD-saga was more than sufficiently fertile ground for creating such a film, and both were committed to the belief that Green Zone was one step further than Bourne, and that it would be enough to make people talk.
What was of most interest, however, came solely from Damon. Provoked by a question about how ‘real’ his character was, he explained that in preparation for the film he had spent a lot of time with an American soldier called ‘Monty’ Gonzales. Monty was a leader of the hunt for WMDs, and, in a revelation that brings Green Zone scarily to life, Damon explained that Monty knew from his very first mission that something was wrong. Intelligence passed down from Washington had led his division to a porcelain factory, which they all instinctively knew after raiding it could never have been anything more than just that. Miller starts asking questions after three seemingly phony intelligence reports. The reality is that Gonzales sensed deception from the beginning, and came to believe that through its lies, America lost its moral authority. Damon sees the consequent search for truth to be a noble, legitimate quest.
Looking forward to the future, Damon made it clear he has no intentions of slowing down, and indeed, he has been busy: The Informant, Invictus and Green Zone will have all come out in the space of 6 months. Confessing the reasons for this hyperactivity, Damon says that he wants to direct himself some day. When he’s getting offers left, right and centre to work with Martin Scorsese, Clint Eastwood, Paul Greengrass and even, soon, the Coen brothers, he’s clearly not going to pass up the opportunity for on-the-job training from some of the best directors in the world any time soon.
The Cherwell’s online review of Green Zone is available in the film section.
